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«^:-/iry . /'-.2 f^ 



^ON-MOTS. 




First Edition of this issue of " Bon-Mots ** 

printed April 1893, 

Second Edition^ December 1893. 






SC^ai.. 



** Wit makes Us ovm welcome^ and levels all dis- 
Unctions*'' — Emerson. 

*' Blockheads^ with reason^ wicked wits ahhor'" — 

" The rays of wit gild wheresoeer they strike." — 

Stillingworth. 

•* Often it consisteth in one knows not ivhaty and 
s^ringeth up one can hardly tell how.'' — Barrow. 

*' Not in vain hath he lived, whose beneficent mirth 
Hath lightened the frowns and the furrows of 
earthr^ 

" While we're quaffing^ 
Let's have laughing — 
Who the devil cares for more ? " — 

" Man could direct his way by plain reason, and 
support life by tasteless food ; but God has given him 
wit and flavour^ laughter and perfume ^ to enliven 
the days of man's pilgrimage^ and to charm his 
pained steps over the burning war/."— Sydney 
Smith. 



'/r' 







INTRODUCTION. 
SYDNEY SMITH. 

• • "IX7HEN Philip of Macedon was king," says 
Dr Doran, ' ' there was a club of wits in 
Athens which met once a week — not in a tavern, 
but in the temple of Hercules. They had such 
a favourable opinion of their own powers, that 
they chronicled all their own jokes ; and kings 
sent to borrow the book — The Book of the Sixty. " 
In after years, any Athenian telling a "good 
story" was in danger of hearing that it was 
"one of the Sixty," even as, to-day, in similar 
circumstances, we are ready to cry "Joe Miller" 
or, less politely, "chestnuts." And so it is that 
when a good story, a witty retort, a bon-tnot is 
to be repeated, it is put down to the reigning 
wit. How many stories, for example, are 
credited indiscriminately to Sydney Smith, 
Sheridan, Douglas Jerrold, Theodore Hook, 
Samuel Foote, and others. Absolute certainty 



8 'Introduction. 

as to the paternity of an oft-repeated joke is 
frequently out of the question. What I have 
done in these volumes is, by gathering the mots 
from contemporary lives, diaries, memoirs, 
autobiographies et hoc genus omne^ to get as 
near as may be to correctness. 

The sayings of Sydney Smith — a wit, like the 
Sixty, of the temple, not of the tavern — as will 
be seen in the following pages, are of various 
kinds, from the lightning flashes of wit, to 
wild, rollicking, uproarious humour. As Tom 
Moore said of him in his Diary : ' ' He never 
minds what nonsense he talks, which is one 
of the great reasons of his saying so much 
that is comical." Another entry in the same 
Diary reads: "Sydney at dinner and after 
in full force; sometimes high comedy, some- 
times farce ; both perfect in their way. Sydney 
most rampantly facetious. " Often the mot that 
flashed out in conversation was afterwards em- 
ployed in his writings : as Moncton Milnes (Lord 
Houghton) put it: "Smith always exercises 
his jokes in society before he runs them upon 
paper. " Lord Lansdowne excellently described 
Sydney Smith as " a mixture of Punch and 
Cato." Landor addressed him as '■ Humour's 
pink primate, Sydney Smith." In the Noctes, 
too, he is described as " a rare genius of the gro- 
tesque, with his quips and cranks a formidable 
enemy to pomposity and pretension. No man 
can wear a big wig comfortably in bis presence. " 



Introduction. 9 

Indeed what Smith's contemporaries have 
written of his wit would fill as large a volume 
as the examples of his wit that have come down 
to us. In the hope that some idea of the man 
himself as he spoke them, may be more present 
in reading his mois^ a few of these thumb-nail 
notes on Sydney Smith as a wit are here tran- 
scribed : — Sydney Smith's conversation was the 
conversation of a man mad with spirits. — His 
intellect was like an electric coil, you touched it 
and it flashed out in .sparkling coruscations at 
the touch.— Possessing as much wit as a man 
without a grain of his sense, he had as much sense 
as a man without a spark of his wit. — Macaulay 
said of him that it seemed to be his greatest 
luxury to keep his wife and daughters laughing 
for two or three hours every day. — The lips of 
Sydney Smith dropping sparkling diamonds of 
wit every now and then, attention to which was 
demanded by the speaker's own boisterous 
laugh. — Crabb Robinson wrote of Smith in his 
Diary that his "faun-like face was a sort of 
promise of good things when he did but open 
his lips." — Lord Dudley said to Sydney Smith : 
• ' You have been laughing at me for the last seven 
years, and yet in all that time ycu never said 
a single thing to me I wished unsaid." — His 
talk is a torrent of wit, fun, nonsense, pointed 
remark, just observation, and happy illustra- 
tions. — No stain of impurity ever sullied his 
blade. — ' * Sydney , ' ' said one of his college chums, 



lo Introduction. 

"your sense, wit, and clumsiness always give me 
the idea of an Athenian carter." — His casual 
bon-mots wreathed the town with smiles. — A wise 
man in the brilliant guise of a wit. — His 
inevitable and irresistible flood of fun rolled 
over one like a cataract, never ceasing, never 
slackening, never varying its pace for an instant. 
The following is an outline of his life: — 1771. 
Sydney Smith was born on June 3rd at Wood- 
ford, Essex ; his father was Robert Smith ; his 
mother, Maria Olier, daughter of a French 
emigrant. — 1782. Scholar of Winchester Col- 
lege. — 1789. New College, Oxford ; fellowship 
two years later. — 1794. Left College and 
entered the Church. Curate of Nether Avon, 
Wilts. — 1798. Went to Edinburgh as tutor. — 
1800. Married Catherine Pybus. — 1802. Started 
the Edinburgh Review in conjunction with 
Brougham, Jeffrey, Francis Horner and others. 
— 1803. Left Edinburgh for London. Preacher 
at the Foundling Hospital ; lectured on Moral 
Philosophy at the Royal Institution. — 1807. 
Rector of Foston-le-Clay, Yorkshire, "Village 
parson and doctor." Peter Plymleys Letters. 
— 1828. Canon of Bristol. — 1829. Rector of 
Combe Florey. — 1831. Canon Residentiary of 
St Paul's. — 1845. February 22nd, died. 

W. J. 



Introduction. 1 1 



RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 

" A TRUE-TRAINED wit lays his plan like a 
general — foresees the circumstances of the con- 
versation — surveys the ground and contingencies 
— and detaches a question to draw you into the 
palpable ambuscade of his ready-made joke." 
So wrote Sheridan, and his practice showed him, 
according to his own definition, to be a " true- 
trained wit," for often the bon-mot was carefully 
elaborated and then the conversation as carefully 
guided to a fitting point at which the wit might 
be brought forth with apparent spontaneity. 
This idea of wit is very different from the 
general one which is wittily defined by Sydney 
Smith when he called wit "in midwife's phrase, 
a quick conception and an easy delivery. " Elach 
of these wits defined wit as it was exemplified 
in his own practice ; with Smith as with 
Douglas Jerrold, the joke flashed to the tip of 
the tongue and must out "though the heavens 
should crack and the dearest friend take it 
amiss." With Sheridan it was far otherwise, 
and one of his biographers has shown the world 
how carefully he elaborated the thought which 
was ultimately perfected as used in the House 
of Commons, when Sheridan said that the 
previous speaker was indebted to his imagina- 
tion for his facts and his memory for his wit 



12 Introduction. 

Many of Sheridan's recorded sayings are, how- 
ever, obviously retorts on the spur of the 
moment ; and the testimony of several of his 
contemporaries is that his wit was at times so 
incessant that it could but be spontaneous. — 
Mrs Le Fanu, his sister, said that the same 
playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious 
wit, that was shown afterwards in his writ- 
ings, cheered and delighted the family circle. — 
" Sheridan's humour, or rather wit," said Lord 
B3Ton, "was always saturnine, and sometimes 
savage. He never laughed, at least that I saw, 
and I watched him. In society I have met him 
frequently; he was superb." — His wit was an 
incessant flame. — He sometimes displayed a 
kind of serious and elegant playfulness, not 
apparently rising to wit, but unobservedly 
saturated with it, which was unspeakably 
pleasing. — His wit is the wit of common sense. 
— Grace of manner, charm of voice, fluency 
of language, and, above all, a brilliancy of 
sarcasm, a wit and a humour; and again a 
felicity of statement that made him the delight 
of every audience, and that excited the admira- 
tion of his very opponents themselves. — The 
wit displayed by Sheridan in Parliament was 
perhaps, from the suavity of his temper, much 
less sharp than brilliant. — The story of his 
life told in outline is as follows : — 1751. Richard 
Brinsley Butler Sheridan was born on October 
30th in Dublin ; his father, Thomas Sheridan, 



Introduction. 13 

an actor manager ; his mother, Frances 
Chamberlaine, an accomplished authoress. — 
1762. At school at Harrow, where he remained 
for five or six years. — 1773. Married Miss 
Linley, a noted beauty and singer. — 1775. The 
Rivals ; St Patricks Day, or the Scheming 
Lieutenant, and the Duenna produced. — 1776. 
Sheridan purchased a share in Drury Lane 
Theatre. — 1777. A Trip to Scarborough, and 
The School for Scandal. — 1779. The Critic. — 
178a Entered Parliament as member for Staf- 
ford. — 1782. Under-Secretary of State in the 
Rockingham Administration. — 1783. Secretary 
to the Treasury in the Coalition Ministry. — 
1787. One of the accusers in the Impeachment 
of Warren Hastings. — 1788. Made his great 
speech in the impeachment. Production of 
Pitarro. — 1809. Drury Lane Theatre burnt. — 
1816. July 7, died. 

W. J. 




SYDNEY SMITH. 




BON-MOTS 



SYDNEV SMITH. 



lestion, "are anyofoar institutions in danger? " 
" No, but I have just been with Brougham, 
loni I sought out for the purpo^ of making 
I important communication , but. upon my 
jrd, be (cealed me as if I were a fool." 
" Never mind, my dear fellow," said Smith, 
his most sympathetic tones, "never mind, 
rver mind, be thought you knew il t " 



1 8 Bon-Mots. 

'y HE whole of my life (said Smith to a friend), 
has been passed like a razor — in hot water 
or a scrape. 

— WVW— 

J^ESCRIBING a dinner at which he had 
been present, Sydney Smith said : ** Puns 
are frequently provocative. One day, after 
dinner with a Nabob, he was giving us 
Madeira — 

** ' London — East India —picked— particular^ 

then a second thought struck him, and he 
remembered that he had a few flasks of Con- 
stantia in the house, and he produced one. 
He gave us just a glass apiece. We became 
clamorous for another, but the old qui-hi was 
firm in his refusal. 

*' *Well, well,' said I, 'since we can't 
double the Cape, we must e'en go back tc 
Madeira.' 

'• We all laughed, our host most of all, and 
he, too, luckily had his joke, * Be of Good 
Hope, you shall double it,' at which we al 
laughed still more immoderately, and drank the 
second flask." 

— WV/W— 

TT is admirable of you to send game to th( 
clergy; that is what I call real piety; i 
reminds one of the primitive Christians. 



Sydney Smith. 19 

'yWO well-known men were being discussed. 
Said Smith: "There is the same differ- 
ence between their tongues as between the hour 
and the minute hand ; one goes twelve times 
as fast, and the other signifies twelve times as 
much." 

"DLANCO WHITE used to relate that he 
once complained to Sydney Smith of long 
and weary nights of utter sleep- 
lessness, owing to bad health. 
" I can furnish you," replied 
Smith, "with an infallible sopori- 
fic. I have published two vol- 
umes of Sermons. I will send 
them to you ; they will last a long 
time. You are to take them 
into bed with you, and begin 
at the beginning. Before you 
have read three pages you will be fast ; but take 
care that you put the candle in a safe place, or 
you will sleep so sound, you will be burned to 
death." 

— WWv— 

-yALKING of Milner's History of Chris- 
tianiiyj Sydney Smith said, "It's a mis- 
take altogether in our friend — no man has a 
right to write on such subjects, unless he is 
prepared to go the whole lamb. 




20 Bon-Mots. 

rys seeing a lady sitting at the dinner-table 
between two Bishops, Smith enquired, 
•* Her name is Susanna, I assume?" 

— WVW— 



COME one having said of Macaulay, " He 
"^ will let nobody talk but himself," Smith at 
once answered, "Why, who would if he could 
help it?" 

A T one of Rogers's breakfast-parties Sydney 

Smith is reported to have said, " I wish I 

could write poetry like you, Rogers, I would 

write an Inferno^ and I would put Macaulay 

among a lot of disputants — and gag him ! " 

— ^/\/\/\^— 

A YOUNG clergyman tremblingly asked 

the Canon how he liked his preaching. 

" Well, if you must know," came the answer, 

"I like you better in the bottle than in the 

wood." 

— W\/W- 

r\P Homer, one of his early colleagues on the ' 
Edinburgh Review^ Sydney Smith said 
that he had the Ten Commandments written 
on his face, and looked so virtuous that he 
might commit any crime with impunity. 



Sydney Smith. 21 

"VTES, X. was merry, not wise. You know^ a 

man of small understanding is merry 

where he can, not where he should. Lightning 

must, I should think, be the wit of the heavens. 

A LEARNED bore was dwelling at inordinate 

length upon the great size of a fly's eye 

compared with its bulk, when Sydney Smith 

flatly contradicted him, quoting triumphantly, 

these words from the Death of Cock Robin ^ 

"I, said the fly, with my little eye, 
I saw him die.*' 

— ^/\/\/w— 

•* T WILL explain it to you," said W. D. 

*• Oh, pray don't, my dear fellow,' 
said Sydney, laughing, "I did understand a 
little about the Scotch Kirk before you under- 
took to explain it to me yesterday ; but now my 
mind is like a London fog on the subject." 

"M"©, I don't like dogs ; I always expect them 
to go mad. A lady asked me once for a 
motto for her dog Spot I proposed, "Out, 
damned Spot," but she did not think it senti- 
mental enough. 



22 Bon-Mots. 

•yAKING up the cartoon of the Beautiful 
Gate, Sydney Smith began reading the 
fine speech of St Peter to the beggar, •* Silver 
and gold have I none." 

•*Ah! that was in the time of the paper 
currency," said he. 



CYDNEY SMITH said that he had got rid of 
*" the two great bores of society, invitation 
and introduction, and that he literally went 
to routs without either. 

— vsWW— 

'T'ALKING with Southey over their mutual 
friends, Sydney Smith referred to Charles 
Lamb's intemperate habits. " He draws so 
much beer that no wonder he buffoons people 
— he must have a butt to put it in." 

" ROGERS told us," says Crabb Robinson 
in his Diary, "that Sydney Smith said 
to his eldest brother, a grave and prosperous 
gentleman : * Brother, you and I are exceptions 
to the laws of nature. You have risen by your 
gravity, and I have sunk by my levity.' " * 

* Dyce says that Rogers ascribed this mot to 
Home Tooke. 



glSHOPWILBERFORCE describes a mosl 
inleresling three days spent al Eton al 
Selwyn's farewell sermon. " 1 preached once, 
and he once, Heisjust 
selling out, and my 
friend Whitehead with 
him as chaplain. Syd- 
ney Smith says it will 
make quite a revolution 
in the dinners of New 
Zealand : llli (T Evlque 

iherchi dish, and your 
man will add ihat there 
is cold clergyman on the side-table." 

It was on the same occasion that Sydney 
Smith also said to Sel»-yn, "And as for myself, 
my Lord, all I can say is, ihal when your new 
parishioners do eat you, I sincerely hope you 
may disagree with ihem." 



A YOUNG man of fashion who was trying 
■"■ to uphold the reputation of a well-known 
nobleman — accused of cheating at play — 
thought to clinch his argument by eiclninting, 
"Well, Idon'l care what llley say, IhnvejusI 
left a card upon him." 

"Did you mar* il then?" enquired Sydney 



24 Bon-Mots. 

/^ALLING upon a fellow writer in the 
Edinburgh Review, Sydney Smitli found 
him actually reading a book for the purpose of 
reviewing it. Having expressed his astonish- 
ment in the strongest terms, his friend inquired 
how he managed when performing the critical 
office. 

' * Oh, I never read a book before reviewing 
it : it prejudices a man so," was Smith's 
explanation. 

— WVV'^ 

A/TY friend Tait sent his boy over to spend 
the day with my boy; they set him on 
my boy's pony, and the pony ran away with 
him, "Oh, ho," cried I, "that is what our 
lively neighbours call tite-montie." 

— vV\/Vv— 

pAMPBELL, the poet, tells how Sydney 
Smith once said to him that if Hallam 
were in the midst of a full assembly of scientific 
men, and if Euclid were to enter the room 
with his Elements under his arm and were to 
say, "Gentlemen, I suppose no one present 
doubts the truth of the Forty-fifth Proposition 
of my first Book of Elements" — Mr Hallam 
would immediately say, "Yes, / have my 
doubts." 



Sydney Smith. 25 

A SCANDALISED fop pointed out, with a 
grimace of disgust, a straw on the carpet 
of a drawing-room filled with people of fashion, 
thereby implying that some unworthy plebeian 
had driven to the door in a hackney coach. 
** God bless my soul," said Sydney Smith, " do 
you care about that ? Why, I was at a literary 
soirSe the other night where the carpet was like 
a stubble field." 

— vy/VW— 

C YDNEY SMITH was talking over the sub- 
ject of American Slavery with his friend 
Mr Everett, when Everett observed in a tone 
of tender self-pity, that we in England did not 
really understand the matter, and could not feel 
at our distance how impossible it was to asso- 
ciate with the negroes, they smelt so abominably. 
" Ah ! " retorted Smith, without a moment's 
hesitation, "'At si non alium late jactasset 
odorem civts erat' ('laurus erat,' in Virgil). 
That, sir, may be a reason for not inviting 
him to a crowded evening party, but it is no 
reason for refusing them their freedom." 

/RESERVING Lord Brougham's one-horse 
carriage. Smith remarked to a friend, 
alluding to the B surmounted by a corone on 
the panel, "There goes a carriage with a B 
outside and a wasp within." 



26 Bon -Mots. 

yi RS LONGMAN being about to entertain 
at dinner the two noted entomologists, 
Kirby and Spmce. Sydney Smitli suggested n 
mena which should include "flea-pates, earth 
worms on toast, caterpillars crawling in cream 
and removii^ themselves," &c. 



■J-OM MOORE asked Smith to accompany 

him to Newton's studio to see his (Moore's) 

portrait. Smith paused for a moment in front 



of the picture, then, turning to the painter, said, 
" Couldn't you contrive to throw into his face 
somewhat of a stronger expression of hostility 
to the Church Establishment ? " 



C YDNEY SMITH, walking with the Bishop 
of Exeter, saw written up over a shop, 

'■Shall we go in, my lord?" 



Sydney Smith. 27 

CIR RODERICK MURCHISON, according 
to Sydney Smith, would be found giving 
•'not swarries, but quarries; all the ladies 
having ivory-handled hammers and six little 
bottles for each to try the stones." 

A/TACAULAY had told Sydney Smith that 
meeting him was some compensation for 
missing Ramohun Roy. Sydney broke forth : 
•* Compensation ! Do you mean to insult me ? 
A beneficed clergyman, an ortho- 
dox clergyman, a nobleman's 
chaplain, to be no more than 
compensation for a Brahmin ; 
and a heretic Brahmin, too, a 
fellow who has lost his own reli- 
gion and can't find another ; a 
vile heterodox dog, who, as I am credibly in- 
formed eats beef-steaks in private ! A man who 
has lost his caste ! who ought to have melted 
lead poured down his nostrils, if the good old 
Vedas were in force as they ought to be." 

— vVWvr- 

/^N Mrs Austin explaining that she was no 
relation to Miss Austen, Sydney Smith 
said to her, "You are quite wrong; I always 
let it be inferred that I am the son of Adam 
Smith. •• 




28 Bon-Mots. 

'M'OTHING amuses me more than to observe 
the utter want of perception of a joke in 
some minds. Mrs Jackson called one day and 
spoke of the oppressive heat. 

•' Heat, ma'am ! " I said, •' it was so dreadful 
here that I found there was nothing left for it 
but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones." 

* ' Take off your flesh and sit in your bones, 
sir ! Oh, Mr Smith ! how could you do that?" 
she exclaimed, with the utmost gravity. 

" Nothing more easy, ma'am ; come and see 
next time." But she ordered her carriage and 
evidently thought it a very unorthodox pro- 
ceeding. 

— i/v/V/Vvv— 

'T'ALKING once of charades and such like 
literary minutiae, Smith said that charades 
if made at all should be made without benefit 
of clergy ; the offender should instantly be 
hurried off to execution, and be cut off in the 
middle of his dulness, without being allowed to 
explain to his executioner why his first is like 
his second or what is the resemblance between 
his fourth and his ninth. 

TT is a grand thing for a man to find out his 
own line and keep to it— you get so much 
further and so much faster on your own rail. 



Sydney Smith. 29 

pXPLAINING the scantiness of Scotch 
scholarship, Sydney Smith said, "Greek 
was a witch, and, as such, could not cross run- 
ning water, nor ever get beyond the Tweed." 

'\X7'AR was being discussed when Sydney 

Smith said that in some causes he would 

allow fighting to be a luxury, adding that the 

business of prudent, sensible men was to guard 

against luxury. * 

— ^/^/\/Vv^ 

CYDNEY SMITH said that he must believe 
in apostolical succession, there being no 
other way of accounting for the descent of the 
(then) Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot. 



"DEFERRING to the fact of men so often 
colliding with one another over different 
questions, Smith exclaimed, "How few men 
are on the right rail 1 " 

— ^VWv — 

'T'HERE is not the least use in preaching to 
anyone, unless you chance to catch them 
ill. 

* He happily used the same idea in a characteristic 
letter to Lady Grey. 



pleasure, as he Has a man of sense, simplicity, 
and learning, but with sucli a total absence 

of it in others as 
lim an amusing object 
jlation to the uit. 

The conversation al 
he table look a liberal 
urn. Sydney Smith in 
the full career of bis 
■its happened to say 
I though he was not 
erally considered an 

confess he bad a lillle weakness, one secret 
ivisb— he would like lo roast a Quakrr. 

■'Good Heavens, Mr Smitbl" said Mr B. 
full of horror, " roasl a Quaker ? " 

■'Yes, sir!" (with the greatest gravity) "roast 

" But do you consider, Mr Smith, Ihe 
torture?" 

■■I have eon- 



Sydney Smith. 31 

say; the Quaker would undoubtedly suffer 
acutely, but everyone has his tastes, — mine 
would be to roast a Quaker. One would 
satisfy me, only one. It is one of those 
peculiarities I have striven against in vain, 
and I hope you will pardon my weakness." 

Mr B.'s honest simplicity could stand this 
no longer, and he seemed hardly able to sit at 
table with him. The whole company were in 
roars of laughter at the scene ; but neither 
this, nor the mirth and mischief sparkling in 
Sydney's eyes, enlightened him in the least, 
for a joke was a thing of which he had no 
conception. 

At last Smith, seeing that he was giving real 
pain, said, "Come, come, Mr B., since you 
think I am so very illiberal, I must be wrong, 
and will give up my roasted Quaker, rather 
than your esteem ; let us drink wine together." 

Peace was made, but it is doubtful whether 
time or explanation ever made B. comprehend 
that it was a joke. 

CIR ANTHONY PANIZZI (librarian of the 
British Museum) was talking to Sydney 
Smith at a grand reception when the venerable 
Thomas Grenville entered. ' • Ah 1 " exclaimed 
Smith to his companion, " here comes the man 
from whom we all ought to learn how to grow 
old." 



32 Bon-Mots. 

' ' 'T'HE great use of the raised centre revolving 
on a round table," said Sydney Smith, 
•• would be to put Macaulay (' the talk-mill' ) 
on it, and so distribute his talk fairly to the 
company." 

"VTELBOURNE used to begin by damning 
the subject of conversation. I used to 
say, •' Well, well, suppose it damned, and pro- 
ceed with the discussion ! " 

— vy/VW— 

T N conversation once, after listening to some 
one's anecdotage, Sydney Smith remarked 
with all solemnity that a certain ancient people 
ate their old members who became troublesome, 
and told long stories. 



CMITH was very comical about a remedy of 
Lady Holland's for the book- worms in the 
library at Holland House, having the books 
washed with some mercurial preparation. He 
said it was Sir Humphry Davy's opinion that 
the air would become charged with the mercury, 
and that the whole family would be salivated, 
adding, " I shall see Allen some day, with his 
tongue hanging out, speechless, and shall take 
the opportunity to stick a few principles into 
him." 



Sydney Smith. 33 

T^HE same passion which peoples the parson- 
age with chubby children, animates the 
Arminian, and bums in the breast of the 
Baptist. 

1^ RS B. has not very clear ideas about the 

tides. I remember at a large party, her 

insisting that it was always high-tide at London 




Bridge at twelve o'clock. She referred to nte. 

" Now, Mr Smith, is it not so?" 

I answered, "It used not to be so, I believe, 
formerly, but perhaps the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen have altered it lately." 

C IR Henry Holland was so smooth mannered 

that Sydney Smith once said of him that 

" he was all mucilage, he was so very bland. " 

C 



34 Bon-Mots. 

C YDNEY SMITH talked once of his house 
being full of cousins, adding that they 
were all first cousins, and he wished them — 
once removed. 

— vV\/Vv— 

/^N Matthews saying on some occasion of 
Tom Hill, "Will nobody stop that • 
fellow's mouth? " " Not me;' said Smith, " I 
know the way to Highgate but not to muzzle 
Hill " (Muswell Hill). 

— w\/\/v*.— 

COME people were assembled to look at a 
turtle that had been sent to the house of a 
friend, when a child of the party stooped down 
and began eagerly stroking its shell. 

"Why are you doing that?" said Sydney 
Smith. 

" Oh, to please the turtle." 

"Why, child, you might as well stroke the 
dome of St Paul's^ to please the Dean and 
Chapter." 

— vv/\/Vv^ 

TOURING one of the famous breakfasts at 

Samuel Rogers', the talk was of stories of 

dram-drinkers catching fire : Smith pursued the 

idea i n every possible shape. The inconvenience 



Sydney Smith. 35 

of a man coming too near the candle when he 
was speaking, "Sir, your observation has 
caught fire!" He then went on to imagine a 
parson breaking into a blaze in the pulpit ; the 
engines called to put him out — no water to be 
had, the man at the waterworks being an 
Unitarian or an Atheist. 

TXTHILST at Combe Florey, as Smith was 
writing one day in his favourite bay 
window, a pompous little gentleman in rusty 
black was ushered in. 

" May I ask what procures me the honour of 
this visit?" enquired Smith. 

•' Oh," said the little man, •• I am compound- 
ing a history of the distinguished families of 
Somersetshire, and have called to obtain the 
Smith arms." 

" I regret, sir," responded Smith, ** not to be 
able to contribute to so valuable a work ; but 
the Smiths never had any arms, and have 
invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs. " 

— A/\/\A^ — 

T^O one who expressed a very strong opinion, 
and justified it on the ground that he was 
only a plain man, Sydney Smith retorted that 
he was not aware that the gentleman's personal 
appearance had anything to do with the 
question. 



36 Bon-Mots. 

■\X7'HEN Lord Jeffrey was having a cast of 
his face taken, Sydney Smith, who was 
present, on seeing the face of his friend com- 
pletely covered with the plaster, leaped up, 
exclaiming mock heroically, "There's immor- 
tality! but God keep me from such a mode 
of obtaining it." 

A BEE came in through the open window at 
a dinner party, when, turning to a lady 

who sat next to him, a conceited young officer 
exclaimed in peevish, affected tones, 
" If there is one thing I hate more 
than another, it is the buzzing of 
a bee at dinner time." 

Sydney Smith immediately re- 
marked in an undertone to his fair 

neighbour, ' ' I suppose, madam, if a hornet 

came in, the captain would sell out!'' 




COMEONE mentioned a young Scotchman 
who was about to marry an Irish widow 
double his age, and of very large (considerable) 
proportions. ' ' Going to marry her ! " Smith 
exclaimed, bursting out laughing. "Impos- 
sible ; you mean a part of her. He could not 
marry all of her himself. It would not be a 
case of bigamy, but of trigamy. The neigh- 
bourhood or the magistrate should interfere. 



Sydney Smith. 37 

There is enough of her to furnish wives for the 
whole parish. One man marry her ! it is 
monstrous ! you might people a colony with 
her, or, perhaps, take your morning's walk 
round her, always providing that there were 
frequent resting-places, and you were in rude 
health. I once was rash enough to walk round 
her before breakfast, but only got half-way and 
gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the 
Riot Act, and disperse her ; in short you might 
do anything but marry her." 

"Oh," said a young lady present, recovering 
from the general laugh, " did you make that all 
up yourself?"' 

"Yes, Lucy, all myself, child, all my own 
thunder. Do you think when I am about to 
make a joke, I send for my neighbours or 
consult the clerk and churchwardens upon it?" 

" nPHE miseries of human life," said Sydney 
Smith, on one occasion, "were things 
only to be successfully encountered on a basis 
of beef and wine." 

A DEVONSHIRE elector (some time in the 

thirties) expressed surprise at Lord John 

Russell's small stature. Sydney Smith explained 

it by saying it was because Lord John "was 

wasted in the country's service. " 



41 



38 Bon-Mots. 

AN American said to Sydney Smith, "You 

are so funny ! Do you know, you remind 

me of our great joker, Dr Chamberlayne." 

I am much honoured," Smith replied; 

but I was not aware that you had such a 

functionary in the United States." 

— A/\/\/Vs»— 

CIR EDWIN LANDSEER somewhat 
patronisingly offered to let Sydney Smith 
sit to him for his portrait. 

"Is thy servant a dog," retorted Sydney 
Smith, "that he should do this thing?"* 

-^\/V\A^ — 

T DO not mean to be disrespectful, but the 
attempt of the Lords to stop the progress 
of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great 
storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the 
excellent Mrs Partington on that occasion. 
In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood 
upon that town — the tide rose to an incredible 
height — the waves rushed in upon the houses — 
and everything was threatened with destruction. 
In the midst of this sublime and horrible storm, 
Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, 

*This mot has always been ascribed to Sydney 
Smith ; it was so when first current in the thirties, 
though Lord Houghton in his Monographs states 
that Lockhart really said it. 



Sydney Smith. 39 

was seen at the door of her house with mops 
and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out 
the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the 
Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. 
Mrs Partington's spirit was up, but I need not 
tell you that the contest was unequal. The 
Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs Partington. She was 
excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should 
not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, 
be at your ease — be quiet and steady. You 
will beat Mrs Partington. 

— vv/\/Vv^ 

/^F a preacher noted for his dull sermons, 
Sydney Smith said that he evidently 
thought that sin was to be taken from men as 
Eve was from Adam — by casting them into a 
deep sleep. 

—"A/S/S/V— 

'T"0 illustrate the wasting of the moments that 

make up the year, Sydney Smith remarked 

to a young lady, '* Do you ever reflect how you 

pass your life? If you live to seventy-two, which 

I hope you may, your life is passed in the 

following manner :— An hour a day is three years, 

his makes twenty-seven years sleeping ; nine 

ears dressing ; nine years at table ; six years 

laying with children ; nine years walking, 

rawing, and visiting ; six years shopping, and 

ree years quarrelling." 



40 Bon-Mots. 

CYDNEY Smith said that he found the 
influence of the aristocracy "oppressive," 
but added, "However, I never failed, I think, to 
Speak my mind before any of them ; I hardened 
myself early." 

CYDNEY SMITH had, it is well known, 
a preference for London sights and 

sounds to all that the country could offer ; the 

tastes of Young, the actor; 
were somewhat similar 
and when the two me 
at Holland House, anc 
Young had been mono 
polising the conversatioi 
for some time, Smitl 
turned to him, sayinf 
with much fun, " D< 

you know, Mr Young, I had much rather b< 

listening to you than to the lowing of oxen o 

the bleating of sheep." 

— vV/\/Vv— 

A LADY of title closely questioned Sydne; 
Smith as to his forbears, — who was hi 
grandfather ? 

Smith gravely informed her that "he dis 
appeared about the time of the Assizes, and- 
we asked no questions." 




Sydney Smith. 41 

N attempt to warm St Paul's Cathedral 
Sydney Smith described as useless, saying 
that one might as well attempt to warm the 
county of Middlesex. 

CYDNEY SMITH was annoyed one evening 

by the familiarity of a young gentleman, 

who, though a new acquaintance, was encour- 




aged by Smith's reputation as a "joker" to 
address him by his surname alone. After 
awhile the free and easy young man happened 
to mention that he was going that evening, for 
the first time, to the Archbishop of Canterbury's 
palace, and Smith pathetically remarked — 

" Let me give you a little bit of advice ; pray, 
don't clap the Archbishop on the back, and call 
him Howley." 



42 Bon-Mots. 

A SKED one day at the Kinglakes if he wej 
in favour of increasing the number of th 
bishops, Smith answered in his vein of humoui 
ous exaggeration, "Yes, I am for increasin, 
the number of the bishops — those islets in th 
Bristol Channel, the Flat Holm and the St 
Holm, each should have a bishop." 

—A/\/\^ — 

TV/TACAULAY says that he advised Sydne 
Smith once to stay in London over th 
meeting of Parliament, and see something c 
his friends who would be crowding to London 
"My flock!" said Smith, "my dear sii 
remember my flock ! * The hungry sheep loo 
up and are not fed.' " 

T ORD Dudley was one of the most absent 

minded men I think I ever met in society 

One day he met me in the street and invited m 

to meet myself. " Dine with me to-day ; din 

with me, and I will get Sydney Smith to mee 

you." I admitted the temptation he held ou 

to me, but said I was engaged to meet hir 

elsewhere. 

— "^Wv^ — 

TN Sydney's Smith's last illness, a frient 
visiting him said that he feared he wa 
very ill, "Yes," was the reply, "not enougl 
of me left to make a curate." 



Sydney Smith. 43 

"XXTHAT a beautiful thought — a sunbeam 
passes through pollution unpolluted. 



'M'EVER give way to melancholy ; resist it 
steadily, for the habit will encroach. I 
once gave a lady two and twenty recipes against 
melancholy ; one was a bright fire ; another to 
remember all the pleasant things said to and 
of her ; another to keep a l)OX of sugar-plums 
on the chimney-piece, and a kettle simmering 
on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the 
moment, but have in after life discovered how 
true it is that these little pleasures often banish 
melancholy better than higher or more exalted 
objects ; that no means ought to be thought too 
trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves 
or others. 

T IFE is a difficult thing in the country, I 
assure you ; and it requires a good deal 
of forethought to steer the ship when you live 
twelve miles from a lemon. By-the-bye, that 
reminds me of one of our greatest domestic 
triumphs. Some years ago my friend C — , the 
arch-epicure of the Northern Circuit, was dining 
with me. On sitting down to dinner, he turned 
round to the servant and desired him to look 
in his greatcoat pocket, and he would find a 



Bon-Mols. 

for," he said, " I thought it Hkel -^j. 

have duck and green peas for dinnKi- _ 

and iherefore thought i r 

from a town to provide a 

I turned round and 
exclaimed indignantly, — 
''Bunch, bring in the lemon 
bag," and Bunch appeared 
with a bag containing a 
doien lemons. He re- 
randeiTully after that. Oh 1 
rted ihal he goes to bed with con- 
loienges of wild-duck, so as to have 
the taste constantly in his mouth when he 
awakes in the night. 

VTES, I have the greatest possible respect 
for him ; liue from his feeble voice, he 
always reminds me of a liberal blue-bollle fly. 
He gels his head down and his hand on your 
button, and pours into you an uninterru])led 
stream of whiggism in a low buiz. I have 
known him intimately, and conversed con- 
stantly with him for the last thirty years, and 
give him credil for the most enlightened mind, 
and a genuine love of public virtue ; but I can 
safely say that during tbal period, I have never 
beard one single syllable he has uttered. 



Sydney Smith. 45 

COMEONE having mentioned a certain 
marriage as about to take place, Smith 
said that it would be like the union of an acid 
and an alkali ; the result must be a tertium 
quidt or neutral salt. 

— A/\/\/Vv — 

J^ONCTON MILNES had been talking to 
an Alderman, when the latter turned 
away. Smith said to Milnes, ' ' You were speak- 
ing to the Lord Mayor elect. I myself felt in 
his presence like the Roman whom Pyrrhus 
tried to frighten with an elephant and who— 
remained calm. " 

— vWVv^ 

/^THER rules vary: this is the only one 
you will find without exception — that, in 
this world, the salary or reward is always in the 
inverse ratio of the duties performed, 

COMEONE spoke of the financial embarrass- 
ment of University College at that time. 
" Yes, it is so great that I understand they have 
already seized on the air-pump, the exhausted 
receiver, and galvanic batteries ; and that bailiffs 
have been seen chasing the Professor of Modern 
History around the quadrangle." 



46 Bon-Mots. 

T N talking of the Irish Church and pronounc- 
ing it a nuisance, Sydney Smith said, "I 
have always compared it to setting up butcher's 
shops in Hindostan, where they don't eat meat. 
' We don't want this,' they say. ' Aye, aye, 
true enough, but you must support our shop.* " 

/^H ! don't read those twelve volumes till 

they are made into a consomnU of two. 

Lord Dudley did still better, he waited till they 

blew over. 

— vV/\/Vv— 



A JOKE goes a long way in the country. I 
have known one last pretty well for seven 
years. I remember making a joke, after a 
meeting of the clergy in Yorkshire, where there 
was a Reverend Mr Buckle who never spoke, 
when I gave his health saying that he was a 
buckle without a tongue. Most persons within 
hearing laughed, but my next neighbour sat 
unmoved and sunk in thought. At last, a 
quarter of an hour after we had all done, he 
suddenly nudged me, exclaiming — 

" I see now what you meant, Mr Smith ; 
you meant a joke." 

"Yes, sir," I said, "I believe I did," upon 
which he began laughing so heartily that I 
thought he would choke and was obliged to 
pat him on the back. 



Sydney Smith. 47 

"M'EVER neglect your fireplace : I have paid 
great attention to mine, and could burn 
you all out in a moment. Much of the cheer- 
fulness of life depends upon it. Who could be 
miserable with that fire ? What makes a fire 
so pleasant is, I think, that it is a live thing in 
a dead room. 

C YDNEY SMITH was sitting at breakfast one 
morning in the library at Combe Florey, 
when a poor woman came begging him to 
christen a new-bom 
infant without loss 
of time, as she 
thought it was dy- 
ing. He instantly 
quitted the break- 
fast table for this purpose, 
and went off to her cottage. 
On his return, his family en- 
quired in what state he had 
left the poor babe. "Why,' said he, "I just 
gave it a dose of castor-oil, and then I christened 
it; so now the poor child is ready for either 
world." 




— wvw — 



TTO 



take Macaulay out of literature and 
society, and put him in the House of 
Commons, is like taking the chief physician out 
of London during a pestilence. 



48 Bon-Mots. 

JJ ARROGATE seemed to me to be the 

most heaven-forgotten country under the 

sun. When I saw it there were only nine 

mangy fir-trees there — and even they all leant 

away from it. 

— /\/\/\/V>. — 

'V'ES, he has spent all his life in letting down 
empty buckets into empty wells, and he 
is frittering away his age in trying to draw them 
up again. 

— W\/W— 

TT is a great proof of shyness to crumble 
your bread at dinner. I do it when I sit 
by the Bishop of London, and with both hands 
when I sit by the Archbishop. 

— WVW— 

'IXTHEN so showy a woman as Mrs S. 
appears anywhere, though there is no 
garrison within twelve miles, the horizon is im- 
mediately clouded with majors. 

— A/\/\/V>. — 

COMEONE naming a friend as not very 
orthodox, Smith said that if you accuse a 
man of being a Socinian it is all over with him ; 
for the country gentlemen all think it has some- 
thing to do with poaching. 



Sydney Smith. 49 

X}£RS having praised the gentleness of 
Smith's horse, " Yes," said Smith, " it is 
OSS of the rocking horse. " 

— W\/W— 

ARRIAGE resembles a pair of shears, so 
joined that they cannot be separated; 
n moving in opposite directions, yet always 
ishing anyone who comes between them. 

ME evening at Sydney Smith's house, a few 
friends had come in to tea, amongst others 
d Jeffrey and Doctor Holland. Some one 
ke of Talleyrand. 

Oh," said Sydney, "Lady Holland laboured 
issantly to convince me that Talleyrand was 
2eable, and was very angry because his 
val was usually a signal for my departure ; 
, in the first place, he never spoke at all till 
had not only devoured, but digested his 
ner, and as this was a slow process with 
I, it did not occur till everybody else was 
ep, or ought to have been so ; and when he 
speak he was so inarticulate I could never 
ierstand a word he said." 
It was otherwise with me," said Doctor 
Hand, "I never found much difficulty in 
owing him." 

D 



50 



Bon-Mots. 



• ' Did not you ? why it was an abuse of terms 
to call it talking at all ; for he had no teeth, 
and, I believe no roof to his mouth — no uvula 
— no larynx — no trachea — no epiglottis — no 
anything. It was not talking, it was gargling ; 
and that by-the-bye, now I think of it, must be 
the very reason why Holland understood him 
so much better than I did." 




II 



A LADY visitor was walking with Sydney 

Smith round the grounds at Combe Florey, 

when they came across a fine Newfoundland 

dog. ' ' Oh, Mr Smith, why do you 

chain him up?" .asked the visitor. 

" Because he has a passion for 

breakfasting on parish boys." 

"Does he really eat boys, Mr 
Smith?" 
Yes, he devours them, buttons and all." 
The look of horror on his young friend's face, 
said Sydney afterwards, nearly made him die 
of laughing. 

T LIKE pictures, without knowing anything 
about them ; but I hate coxcombry in the 
fine arts, as well as in anything else. I got into 
dreadful disgrace with Sir George Beaumont 
once, who, standing before a picture at Bowood, 
exclaimed, turning to me — 



Sydney Smith. 51 

•' Immense breadth of light and shade I " 
I innocently said, "Yes, about an inch and 

a half." He gave me a look that ought to have 

killed me. 

r'ONVERSING, in the evening with a small 
circle round Miss Berry's* tea-table Sydney 
Smith observed the entrance of a no less 
remarkable person both for 
talents and for years, dressed 
in a beautiful crimson velvet 
gown. He started up to meet 
his fine old friend, exclaim- 
ing, "Exactly the colour of 
my preaching cushion," and 
leading her forward to the 
light he pretended to be lost 
in admiration, saying, " I 
really can hardly keep my 
hands off you ; I shall be preaching on you I 
fear," and thus he continued in the same play- 
ful strain to the infinite amusement of his old 
friend and the little.circle assembled round her. 

pALMERSTON'S manner of speaking is 
like a man washing his hands ; — the 
Scotch members don't know what he is doing. 
* Miss Berry had been a friend of Doctor Johnson's. 




52 Bon-Mots. 

J^ANIEL WEBSTER struck me as being 
much like a steam-engine in trousers. 

— ^/\/\/Vv^ 

/^N one occasion Sydney Smith startled his 
company with a conundrum, " Why is a 
horse in good condition like a greyhound in 
bad? — Because they neither turn a hare,'' 

— vVWv^ 

•' J WISH," said Smith once, after listening 
for some time to his conversational rival, 
•'that Macaulay would see the difference 
between colloquy and soliloquy." 

-v\/\/\/W- 

TVTACCULLOCH having stated that burials 
were no test of the number of deaths, 
••What," said Sydney, "do you mean that 
people keep private burying-grounds, like 
skittle-grounds ? " 

ID OGERS having asked Sydney Smith what 
attitude he recommended him to be 
taken in, was told, " There is a very expressive 
one we of the clergy use in first getting up into 
the pulpit, which might suit you very well" 
(covering his face with his hands). 



Sydney Smith. 53 

A FRIEND commenced saying, " I think I 
may assert without fear of contradiction — " 
" Stop, sir," said Smith, " are you acquainted 
withMrHallam?" 

— ^/\/\/W— 



C YDNEY SMITH, at a dinner party, said to 
his next neighbour, "Now, I know not 
a soul here present, except you and our host ; 
so, if I by chance insult or dishonour any of 
their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or cousins, 
I take you to witness it is unintentional. " 

— v\/\/Vv^ 

'T'HERE are many people who run about 
after happiness like an absent-minded 
man hunting for his hat, which all the while 
is on his head. 

— vWW— 

A FINE ideal statue of Satan by Mr Lough 
failed to find a purchaser, so Sydney 
Smith suggested that it should be presented to 
the Reform Club, because ' ' the devil was the 
first Reformer, and came to grief in Heaven for 
the too great zeal, indiscretion, and un- 
timeliness with which he agitated the Reform 
question ! " 



54 Bon-Mots, 

C YDNEY SMITH would often illustrate the 
weaknesses or foibles of his friends in a 
telling manner. He said once that Rogers had 
been in a very bad humour at a dinner party, 
for Luttrell had been helped to bread sauce 
before him. 

— v\/\/V\^— 

/^H ! the observances of the Church concern- 
ing feasts and fasts are tolerably well kept, 
upon the whole, since the rich keep the feasts 
and the poor the fasts. 



r^N one occasion a man on the Foston 
Rectory farm blundered to such an extent 
that Sydney Smith quite lost his temper, and 
called him a fool. 

" God never made a fool," growled the trans- 
gressor. 

"That is quite true, sir," was the immediate 
retort, " but man was not long in making a fool 
of himself." 

— vv\/\/v— 

pROKER, according to Sydney Smith, would 
be found at a future moment disputing 
with the recording angel as to the date of his 
sins. . . 



Y^ILLIAM CHAMBERS, in eonversalbn 

with Sydney Smith, claimed for Ihe 

Scotch that they hajl after all a consideralile 

fund of humour. "Ob, by all means — you 



are an immensely funny people, but you need 
n little operating upon lo lei the fun out, I 
know no instrument so effectual foe the pur- 



f)ii I don'l mind the caprices of fashionable 

women,— they are as gross as poodles fed 

on milk .ind muffins. 



56 Bon-Mots. 

TXT" HEN I was going to Brougham Hall, two 
raw Scotch girls got into the coach in 
the dark, near Carlisle. "It is very disagree- 
able getting into a coach in the dark," exclaimed 
one, after arranging her bandboxes; "one can- 
not see one's company." 

' ' Very true, ma'am ; and you have a great 
loss in not seeing me, for I am a remarkably 
handsome man." 

" No, sir ! are you really ?" said both. 

" Yes, and in the flower of my youth." 

"What a pity," said they. 

We soon passed near a lamp-post : they both 
darted forward to get a look at me. 

" La, sir, you seem very stout." 

"Oh no, not at all, ma'am; it's only my 
greatcoat." 

"Where are you going, sir?" 

"To Brougham Hall." 

"Why, you must be a very remarkable man 
to be going to Brougham Hall." 

" I am a very remarkable man, ma'am." 

At Penrith they got out after having talked 
incessantly, and tried every possible means to 
discover who I was, exclaiming as they went 
off laughing, "Well, it's very provoking we 
can't see you; but we'll find out who you 
are at the ball. Lord Brougham always 
comes to the ball at Penrith, and we shall 
certainly be there, and shall soon discover your 
name." 



Sydney Smith. 57 

C YDNEY SMITH had proposed that Govern- 
ment should pay the Irish CathoHc priests. 

"They would not take it," said Doctor Doyle. 

" Do you mean to say that if every priest in 
Ireland received to-morrow morning a govern- 
ment letter with a hundred pounds, first quarter 
of their year's income, that they would refuse 
it." 

"Ah, Mr Smith," said Doctor Doyle, ' ' you've 
such a way of putting things." 

"IXTE find Sydney Smith uttering a wish to 
capture a Pennsylvanian, apportion his 
raiment, and give his coat to the widow, his 
waistcoat to the fatherless, and his breeches to 
the poor and them that had none to help them. 
For the witty Canon was a Pennsylvanian bond- 
holder, and the State had repudiated. 

'T'HERE I am, sir, the priest of the Flowery 
Valley,* in a delightful parsonage, about 
which I care a good deal, and a delightful 
country about which I do not care a straw. 

T THINK breakfast so pleasant because no 
one is conceited before one o'clock. 
* Combe Florey. 



58 Bon-Mots. 

T^ESCRIBING a visit to Mahomet's Baths at 
Brighton, where he had been shampooed, 
Sydney Smith said that they squeezed enough 
out of him to make a lean curate. 

— ^/\/\/Vv^ 

/^NE day Rogers took Tom Moore and 

Sydney Smith home in his carriage from 

a breakfast ; and insisted on showing them, by 

the way, Dryden's house in some 

obscure street. It was very wet ; 

the house looked very much like 

other old houses ; and having thin 

shoes on, they both remonstrated, 

but in vain. Rogers got out and 

stood expecting them. 

** Oh ! you see why Rogers don't 
mind getting out," said Smith to 
Moore, laughing and leaning out of 
the carriage, "he has got goloshes on; but, 
Rogers, lend us each a golosh and we will then 
stand on one leg and admire as long as you 
please." 

-^^j\/\/v» — 

"^XT" HY don't the thieves dress with aprons — 
so convenient for storing any stolen 
goods ? You would see the Archbishop of York 
taken off at every race-course, and not a prize- 
fight without an archdeacon in the paws of the 
police. 




Sydney Smith. 59 

A YOUNG lady said, " Oh, Mr Smith, I can- 
not bring this flower to perfection." 
" Then let me lead," said he gallantly, taking 
her hand, ** perfection to the flower." 

— ^/\A/W— 

"DENEVOLENCE is a natmal instinct of 
the human mind. — When A sees B in 
grievous distress, his conscience always urges, 
him to entreat C to help him. 

— WWv— 

•yHE conversation at one of Roger's breakfasts 
turned upon the American treatment of 
unpopular persons. "My dear Rogers," said 
Smith, " if we were both in America, we should 
be tarred and feathered ; and, lovely as we are 
by nature, I should be an ostrich, and you an 



emu." 



-W\/\/Vv— 



/^N an old lady friend being mentioned, 
Smith said that she was perfection, and 
always reminded him of an aged angel. 



-^^/\/\/Vw — 



"IXTHEN I praised the author of the New 
Poor Law the other day, three gentle- 
men at table took it to themselves and blushed 
up to the eyes. 



6o Bon-Mots, 

T N Sydney Smith's last illness, we are told that 
the nurse who attended him confessed to 
having given him a bottle of ink instead of a 
bottle of physic. He quietly asked her to bring 
him all the blotting-paper there was in the 
house. 

— vWW— 



QOMEONE having said that it was foolish in 
General Fitzpatrick to insist upon going 
up alone in the balloon, when it was found that 
there was not force enough to carry up two, 
Sydney Smith replied that it was not foolish in 
General Fitzpatrick, for there is always some- 
thing sublime in sacrificing to great principles 
— his profession was courage. 

'T'RUE, it is most painful, not to meet the 
kindness and affection you feel you have 
deserved ; but it is a mistake to complain of it 
— you cannot extort friendship with a cocked 
pistol. 

— ^yvvw — 

A FRIEND meeting Sydney Smith enquired 
after Rogers. 
" He is not very well." 
* • Why , what is the matter ? " 
"Oh, don't you know, he has produced a 



Sydney Smith. 6i 

couplet ? When our friend is delivered of ft 
couplet, with infinite labour and pains, he lakes 
to his bed, lias straw laid down, the knocker 
tied up, and expects his friends lo call and 
make enquiries, and the answer at the door 
invariably is ' Mr Risers and his Utile couplet 
are as well as can be expected.' When he 
produces an Alexandrine he keeps his bed a 
day longer." 



"a beautiful landscape by 
Nicholas de Falda, a pupil 
of Valdeggio, the only paint* 
ingbythal eminent artist! " 
He consulted two R.A.S 

when he had set them con- 
sidering what opportunities 
were likely to occur, added, 
by way of afier-lhought, "Oh, I ought to have 
told you, though, thai my outside price for a 
picture is thirty-five shillings 1 " 



62 Bon-Mots. 

T ORD JOHN RUSSELL said that Sydney 
Smith told him that at one time he had 
an intention of writing a book of maxims, but 
never got beyond the first, which was this: 
Generally towards the age of forty, women 
got tired of being virtuous, and men of being 
honest. 

— vy/VW— 

TLTAVING seen in the newspapers that Sir 
^neas Mackintosh was come to town, 
Smith drew such a ludicrous caricattu'e of Sir 
JEneas and Lady Dido, for the amusement of 
their namesake, that Sir James Mackintosh 
rolled on the floor in fits of laughter, and 
Sydney Smith, striding across him, exclaimed, 
'' Ruatjusiitiar 

-v\/\/\/W- 

" T CALLED on John Taylor," says Crabb 
Robinson in his Diary. "He is the 
eldest of the Norwich family. One of our best 
men in all respects. It was of this family that 
Sydney Smith said, they reversed the ordinary 
saying, that it takes nine tailors to make a 
man." 

— wy/vw— 

/^NE evening when Sydney Smith and Tom 

Moore were returning from a dinner-party 

at the Longmans', the road being rather 



Sydney Smith. 63 

awk^v-ard, the coachman was desired to wait at 
the bottom. " It would never do," said Smith 
to Moore, "when yom- Memoirs come to be 
written, to have it said ' He went out to dinner 
at the house of his respectable publishers, 
Longmans & Co. , and being overturned on his 
way back was crushed to death by a large 
clergyman.'" 

— WVW— 




C AMUEL ROGERS used sometimes at his 
dinner parties to have candles placed high 
up all round the dining room 
to show off the pictures. On 
his asking Sydney Smith what 
he thought of the plan, Smith 
said that he didn't like it at 
all, — above there was a blaze 
of light, and below nothing but darkness and 
gnashing of teeth. 

— ^\/\/\/w— 

CYDNEY SMITH characterised a good, 
unworldly, yet witty young curate, as a 
"happy union of Dean Swift and Parson 
Adams." 

"XXTHAT I have said ought to be done, 
generally has been done ; not, of course, 
because I have said it, but because it was no 
longer possible to avoid doing it. 



64 Bon-Mots. 

"TJUELS were under discussion, and Syc 

Smith caused much amusement 
suggesting that the weapons should be su 
to the professions of the combatants. ' ' Imag 
for instance two doctors engaged in a duel \ 
oil of croton on the tips of their fingers." 

— fj\j\j\f» — 

/^NE evening when Sydney Smith was tal 
tea with Mrs Austin, the servant entc 
the crowded room with a tea-kettle in his ha 
and it seemed doubtful how he could make 
way among the numerous groups ; but on 
first approach of the steaming kettle, the crc 
receded on all sides, Smith among the r 
though carefully watching the progress of 
lad to the table. — " I declare," he said, turn 
to Mrs Austin, "a man who wishes to m 
his way in life, could do nothing better than 
through the world with a boiling tea-kettle 
his hand." 

— v\/\/W— 

T HAVE divided mankind into classes. Tt 
is the Noodle, — very numerous, but ^ 
known. The Affliction-woman, — a valus 
member of society, generally an ancient spins 
or distant relation of the family, in sr 
circumstances : the moment she hears of ! 



Sydney Smith. 65 

accident or distress in the family, she sets off, 
packs up her little bag, and is immediately 
established there, to comfort, flatter, fetch and 
carry. The Up-takers, — a class of people who 
only see through their fingers' ends, and go 
through a room taking up and touching every- 
thing, however visible and however tender. 
The Clearer 5, — who begin at the dish before 
them, and go on picking or tasting till it is 
cleared, however large the company, small the 
supply, and rare the contents. The Sheep- 
walkers^ — those who never deviate from the 
beaten track, who think as their fathers have 
thought since the Flood, who start from a new 
idea as they would from guilt. The Lemon- 
squeezers of society, — people who act on you as 
a wet blanket, who see a cloud in the sunshine, 
the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of the bride, 
predictors of evil, extinguishers of hope ; who, 
where there are two sides, see only the worst, — 
people whose very look curdles the milk, and 
sets your teeth on edge. The Let-well-alone rs, 
— cousins-germane to the Noodle, yet a variety ; 
people who have begun to think and to act, but 
are timid, and afraid to try their wings, and 
tremble at the sound of their own footsteps as 
they advance, and think it safer to stand still. 
Then the Washerwomefi , — very numerous, who 
exclaim, '• Well ! as sure as ever I put on my 
best bonnet, it is certain to rain," &c. There 
are many more, but I forget them. 

E 



66 Bon-Mots. 

TWINING one day at Mrs Kinglake's (the 
mother of the historian), Sydney Smith 
was asked if he would behave as a neighbour- 
ing clergyman had done, and refuse to bury a 
Dissenter. 

" On the contrary," he replied, " I should be 
only too glad to bury them all." 

— A/wv^. — 

TLJAVING been asked to give an account of 
the books he had been reading, Sydney 
Smith said, "I cannot tell you a thing about 
them — neither can I catalogue the legs of 
mutton that I have eaten, and which have 
made me the man I am." 

— Afi/\^ — 

^F Macaulay, Sydney Smith once said, "Oh 
yes, we doiA talk a great deal; but I 
don't believe Macaulay ever did hear my voice. 
Sometimes when I have told a good story, I 
have thought to myself: — Poor Macaulay! he 
will be very sorry some day to have missed 
hearing that. " 

\^HEN his physican advised him to " take a 
walk upon an empty stomach," Smith 
quietly asked, ' ' Whose ? ' 



"THE charm of London is thai you are nevei' 

glad or sorry for len minules logether ; 

in the country you are the one and ihe other for 

A H 1 what female heart can withstand a red- 
coal ? I think this should be a part of 
female education ; it is much neglecled. As 
you have the rocking-horse ^_^ ^ 



myself in com pan) 

country house of a 
friend once; and as 



a military dL'finitJon 

" was a d — dcockec. ^ 

and virtue (striking: Ihe table uilh his list 
lo enforce the description), was a fellow 
fenced about for Ihe good of ihe service." 
We all burst into such an uncontrollable 
paroxysm of laughter, that I began to fear the 



68 Bon-Mots. 

honest colonel might think it for the good of the 
service to shoot us through the head ; so, for 
the good of the Chtu-ch, hastened to agree with 
him, and we parted very good friends. 



/^ ALLING one day to inquire after the health 
of Dr Blake of Taunton, a Radical and a 
Unitarian, Smith was greeted with the state- 
ment, "I am far from well. Though I sit 
close by a good fire I cannot keep myself 
warm." 

*' I can cure you, doctor," said his visitor, as 
he prepared to go ; " cover yourself with the 
Thirty-Nine Articles, and you will soon have a 
delicious glow all over you." 

CIMPLICITY is a great object in a great 
book ; it is not wanted in a short one. 

— A/\/vw— 

/^N Sydney Smith once saying, in company, 
that he was formerly very shy, some one 
asked, "Were you indeed, Mr Smith? How 
did you cure yourself? " 

' ' Why, it was not very long before I made 
two very useful discoveries : first, that all man- 
kind were not solely employed in observing me 



Sydney Smith. 6^ 

(a belief that all young people have) ; and next, 
that shamming was of no tise ; that the world 
was very clear-sighted, and soon estimated a 
man at his just value. This cured me ; and I 
determined to be natural, and let the world find 
me out." 

•yHE system of tithes I It is an atrocious 
way of paying the clergy. The custom 
of tithe in kind will seem incredible to our 
posterity ; no one will believe in the rami- 
ferous priest officiating in the corn field. 

— A/\/\/\/>i — 

"V'OU will generally see in human life, the 
round men and the angular men planted 
in the wrong hole; but the Bishop of - — , 
being a round man, has fallen into a triangular 
hole, and is far better off than many triangular 
men who have fallen into round holes. 

— awv^.— 

/^F a certain writer Smith said that he made 
all the country smell like Piccadilly. 

— A/y/\/\/v— 

T ONCE saw a dressed statue of Venus in a 
serious house — the Venus Millinaria. 



70 Bon-Mots. 

r\F course if I ever do go to a fancy dress 
ball I should go as a Dissenter. 

— A/y/\/\/v— 

T ALWAYS tell Lady P. that she has pre- 
served the two impossible concomitants of 
a London life — a good complexion and a good 
heart. Most London dinners evaporate in 
whispers to one's next door neighbour. I make 
it a rule never to speak a word to mine, but 
fire across the table ; though I broke it once 
when I heard a lady who sat next me, in a low, 




sweet voice, say "No gravy." I had never 
seen her before, but I turned suddenly round 
and said, "Madam, I have been looking for 
a person who disliked gravy all my life ; let us 
swear eternal friendship." She looked aston- 
ished, but took the oath, and what is better, 
kept it. You laugh — but what more usual 
foundation for friendship, let me ask, than 
similarity of taste ? 



Sydney Smith. 71 

C PEAKING of a Revolutionist, Sydney Smith 
said that no man could effect great bene- 
fits for his country without some sacrifice of the 
minor virtues. 

— WVV^'^" 

/^N being overtalked by Macaulay, Sydney 
Smith avenged himself with the pleas;intry 
that Macaulay not only overflowed with learn- 
ing, but stood in the slops. 

TN a discussion ui>on the ever-green Irish 
question, Sydney Smith said that the object 
of all government was roast meat, potatoes, 
claret, a stout constable, an honest jnstice, a 
clean highway, a free chapel ; that it was 
rubbish to be bawling in the streets about the 
Emerald Isle, and the Isle of the ocean. The 
bold anthem of Erin go bragh I A far better 
one would be Erin go dread and cheese ; Erin 
go cabins that keep out the rain; Erin go 
pantaloons without holes in them, &c. 

— v\/\/Vv— 

JEFFREY having been appointed Dean of 
the Faculty of Advocates, Sydney Smith 
startled a lady from beyond the Tweed with 
the alarming announcement that in England 
our Deans have no faculties. 



72 Bon-Mots. 

'\7'ES, he came once to see us in Yorkshire; 
and he was so small and so active, that he 
looked exactly like a little spirit running about 
in a kind of undress without a body. 

" TN a wet summer," said Sydney Smith, "I 
had been using the anti-liquid prayer, so 
Allen put up a barometer in the vestry, and 
remained there during the rest of the service to 
watch the effects ; but, I am sorry to say, did 
not find them very satisfactory." 

— Afi/\^ — 

'T'HIS is the only sensible Spring 1 ever re- 
member — a perfect March of intellect. 

— VN/VW— 



CMITH objected to the superiority of a city 
feast, saying to a friend, '* I cannot wholly 
value a dinner by the test you do.'' 

'yO his friends Mrs Tighe and Mrs CufFe, on 
their calling upon him. Smith paid a pretty 
compliment, ' ' Ah ! there you are : a cuff that 
everyone would wear, the tie that none would 
loose. " 



;r for refusing to pay til 



•TOM MOORE was enlarging upon a pel 
theory of bis that women could bear pain 
better [han men be- 
cause of their having 
less physical sensibili- 

mously exclaimed 

against. Hcofferedto 

put it to the test by 

bringing in a hot lea-pol, 

which he would answer 

for the ladies of Ihe parly 

being able to hold for a 

much longer time than 

Ihe men. Sydney Smilh 

at once began comically 

enlarging upon Moore's 

cruelly to the female part of the creation, and 

the practice he must have had in such experi- 

" trying Ihe sex with hotlea-pols; the burning 
ploughshare was nothing to iL I ihinit I hear 
his terrific tone in a l(lt-H-llle—' Bring a lea- 
potl'" 



74 Bon- Mots. 

A FEW yards in London dissolve or cement 
friendship. 

CYDNEY SMITH had not much sympathy 
with the increase of colonial bishops — or 
"colonial mitrophilism " as he termed it — 
saying that soon there would not be a rock in 
the sea on which a cormorant can perch, but 
they would put a bishop beside it 

— vVWv^- 

A FRIEND complaining of the interminable 

length of speeches in the House of 

Commons, Sydney Smith said, "Don't talk to 

me of not being able to cough a speaker down 

— ^just try the whooping cough ! " 

-w\/\/\/V\i — 



" TV/TACAULAY is improved! Macaulay 
improves ! " exclaimed Sydney Smith 
of his great rival talker, ' ' I have observed in 
him of late — brilliant flashes of silence ! " 



-w\/\/\/V\i — 

TF you are every day thinking whether you 
have done anything for the Flowers of His- 
tory, of course you will be unhappy. 



Sydney Smith. 75 

AT one of Rogers' "breakfasts" at which 

Hallam was present, Jeffrey arrived late. 

** Ah ! " exclaimed Sydney Smith, greeting him, 

"we know you have been detained trying the 

case of Hallam v. Everybody." 

T CANNOT cure myself of punctuality. 

Vl RS MARCET having complained of sleep- 
lessness, Sydney Smith said, " I can 
furnish you with a perfect soporific. I have 
published two volumes of sermons, take them 
to l)ed with you. I recommended them once 
to Blanco White, and, before the third page, 

he was fast." 

— ^\/\/\/v^. — 

A T a meeting iit which Sydney Smith spoke 
eloquently in favour of Catholic Emancipa- 
tion in 1825, a poor clergyman whispered to 
him that he was quite of his way of thinking, 
— but had nine children. 

"I begged he would remain a Protestant, 
added Smith, in telling the story. 

'T'HERE is no limit to Macaulay's knowledge, 
on small subjects as well as great — he is 
like a book in breeches. 



J)URi 



"Ohl" said Sydney Smilh, "one of Ihe 
■eatesl difficulties I have had wiih my parish- 
ners has been on the subject of dogs." 

' ' How so ? " enquired Lord Spencer. 

"Why, when I first went down into Yorkshire, 



there had nol been a. resident clergyman in my 
parish for a hundred and tirty years. Each 
farmer kepi a huge masliff dog, ranging at 
large, and ready to make his morning meal on 
clergy or laity as best suited his particular 
taste; 1 never could approach a cottage in 
pursuit of my calling, but I rushed into 
the jaws of one of these shaggy monsters. I 
scolded, preached, and prayed without avail ; 



Sydney Smith. 77 

so I determind to try what fears for their pockets 
might do. Forthwith appeared in the county 
pxipers a minute account of a trial of a farmer 
at the Northampton Sessions for keeping dogs 
unconfined ; where said farmer was not only 
fined five pounds, and reprimanded by the 
magistrates, but sentenced to three months' 
imprisonment. The effect was wonderful, and 
the reign of Cerberus ceased in the land." 

"That accounts," said Lord Spencer, "for 
what has puzzled me and Althorp for many 
years. We never failed to attend the Sessions 
at Northampton, and we could never find out 
how we had missed this remarkable dog case." 

CYDNEY SMITH asked a friend how 
herrings should be dressed — or should 
they be eaten naked f 

OOMEONE asked if a certain bishop was 
not about to marry. " Perhaps he may," 
said Sydney, "Yet how can a bishop marry? 
How can he flirt? The most he can say 
is — ' I will see you in the vestry after service.' " 

•T*HE Puseyite priest with his little volume of 
nonsense. 



78 Bon-Mots. 

"LTAVE you heard of Niebuhr's discoveries? 
All Roman history reversed. Tarquin 
turning out an excellent family man, and 
Lucretia a very doubtful character whom 
Lady Davy would not have visited. 

— A/\/\/Vv— 

TV/TEN of small incomes, be it known, have 
often very acute feelings; and a curate 
trod on feels a pang as great as when a bishop 
is refuted. 

— A/\/\/\^< — 

O YDNEY SMITH, when preaching in Edin- 
burgh, seeing how almost exclusively 
congregations were made up of ladies, took 
for his text the verse from the Psalms, " Oh, 
that men would therefore praise the Lord ! " 
with facetious emphasis laid upon the word 
men. 

— A/\/\j^ — 

T WILL do human nature the justice to say 
that we are all prone to make o/Aer people 
do their duty. 

— wvw — 

A/r R P said : * ' I always write best with 

an amanuensis." 
"Oh! but are you quite sure that he puts 
down what you dictate, my dear P ? 



Reeve is laid up wilh Ihe gouL 

"Reeve with Ihe gout?"echoed Smilh, "I 
ahould have thought rheumatism was good 
enough for him." 



/-)N one occasion, a gentleman in tl 
^ wilh me, wilh whom I had been 
ing for some time, suddenly looked oi 
window as we approached 
York, and said— 

" There is a very clever 
man, they say, but a 
damned odd fellow, lives 
near here— Sydney Smith, 
1 believe." 

"He may be ft very odd 



bul odd as he is, he is he 
very much al your servio 
Poorman! Ilhoughthewould 
have sunk into ]ils boots, and vanished through 
the bed of the carriage, he was so distressed ; Init 
I thought I had belter lell him al once, or he 
might proceed lo say I luid murdered my grand- 
molhcr, which I must have resented, you know. 



8o Bon-Mots. 

"P\EAN C ? Oh ! his only adequate pun- 
ishment would be to be preached to death 
by wild curates. 

— A/\/\/\^ — 

TV/TEETING a friend who had grown much 
stouter, Smith greeted him with, "Why, 
I didn't half see you when we met last year." 

T_IAS W. increased his library? Yes, it has 
overflowed all the lower rooms, and has 
crawled up the staircase, and covers the walls 
like an erysipelas. 

— wy/vw— 

C AID Smith of some one : — He has no com- 
mand over his understanding ; it is always 
getting between his legs and tripping him up. 

— v\/\/Vv— 

T ANDSEER said that with Sydney Smith's 
love of humour it must be a great act of 
self-denial to abstain from going to the theatres. 
To this Smith replied that the managers were 
very polite; they sent him free admissions 
which he could not use, and he in return sent 
them free admissions to St Paul's, which they 
did not use. 



Sydney Smith. 8i 

" O^ my remarking," says Moore, ** how well 
and good-humouredly our host had mixed 
us all up together, Smith said, * That 's the great 
use of a good conversational cook, who says to 
his company, " I'll make a good pudding of 
you " ; it *s no matter what you came into the 
bowl, you must come out a pudding. " Dear 
me," says one of the ingredients, ** wasn't I just 
now an egg ? " but he feels the batter sticking to 
him,'"&c.,&c. 

— VNA/W— 



C YDNEY SMITH once told a visitor to his 
Yorkshire parsonage that the hams at his 
table were the only genuine hams — other people's 
were mere Shems and Japhets. 

/^N Mrs Grote, gorgeous with a rose-coloured 
turban, entering a drawing-room. Smith 
said suddenly to his companion, ** Now I know 
the meaning of the word grotesque." 

TXTHEN Sydney Smith lost a few hundreds 

by the Pennsylvania Bonds, a publisher 

called on him offering to retrieve his fortunes, 

if he would get up a three-volume novel. 

"Well, sir," said Smith, after some seeming 

F 



82 Bon-Mots. 

consideration, "if I do so, I can't travel out of 
my own line, ne sutor ultra crepidam, I must 
have an archdeacon for my hero, to fall in love 
with the pew-opener, with the clerk for a con- 
fidant — tyrannical interference of the church- 
wardens — clandestine correspondence concealed 
under the hassocks — appeal to the parishioners, 
&c." 

** All that, sir," said the publisher, " I would 
not presume to interfere with ; I would leave it 
entirely to your own inventive genius. " 

"Well, sir, I am not prepared to come to 
terms at present, but if ever I do undertake such 
a work, you shall certainly have the refusal." 

^NUMERATING and acting the different 

sorts of hand-shaking to be met with in 

society, Smith said there were : the digitory, or 

one finger, exemplified in 
Lord Brougham, who puts 
forth his forefinger, and says 
with his strong northern ac- 
cent, " How flrrr^ you?" The 
sepulchral or mortemain which was 
Mackintosh's manner, laying his 
open hand fiat and coldly against 
yours. The high official, the Archbishop of 
York's, who carries your hand aloft on a level 
with his forehead. The rural or vigorous shake, 
&c., &c. 




Sydney Smith. 83 

"TJESCRIBING the dining process by which 
people in London extract all they can from 
new literary lions, Smith was irresistibly comic : 
Here 's a new man of genius arrived ; put on 
the stew-pan, fry away; we'll soon get it all 
out of him. 

T^HE liberality of churchmen generally, is like 
the quantity of matter in a cone — both get 
less and less as they move higher and higher. 



COMEONE at a dinner party sitting next to 
Sydney Smith was talking of the value of 
some landed property, and saying it was worth 
five pounds a foot per annum. ' ' Ah ! " said 
Smith, ' ' the price of a London footman six foot 
high— thirty guineas a year." 

"QISCUSSING a recent geological work, 
Sydney Smith asked his listeners to imagine 
an excavation at some distant date on the site 
of St Paul's, a lecture by the Owen of a future 
age on the thigh-bone of a minor Canon, or 
the tooth of a Dean, — the form, qualities, the 
knowledge, tastes, propensities, he would 
discover from them. 



84 Bon- Mots. 

'\X7'E naturally lose illusions as we get older, 
like teeth, but there is no one to fit a new 
set into our understandings. I have, alas ! only 
one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of 
Canterbury. 

— WVW— 

T ADY HOLLAND was of a somewhat 
imperious nature, even with the great men 
who foregathered at Holland House, and her 
manner justified Smith s retort, when she said 
to him, "Sydney, ring the bell." 

"Oh yes!" he answered, "and shall I 
sweep the room ? " 



C OMEONE speaking of the utility of a certain 
measure, and quoting a friend's opinion in 
support of it, Sydney Smith broke in saying — 

"Yes, he is of the utilitarian school. That 
man is so hard you might drive a broad- wheeled 
wagon over him, and it would produce no 
impression ; if you were to bore holes in him 
with a gimlet, I am convinced sawdust would 
come out of him. That school treat mankind 
as if they were mere machines ; the feelings or 
affections never enter into their calculations. 
If everything is to be sacrificed to utility, why 
do you bury your grandmother at all ? Why 
don't you cut her into small pieces at once, and 
make portable soup of her?" 



Sydney Smith. 



8s 



HTHE Hon. Mrs Norton was fanning Sydney 
Smith when he suddenly asked, " Is East- 
lake here? What a picture he would make! 
Beauty fanning Piety — happy Piety ! " 



— WVW— 

C MITH once laughingly described his friends 

in the next world. Of Cornewall Lewis 

he said, "If he ever does go to Hades, his 

punishment will be to sit book-less for ever. 




treaty-less, pamphlet-less, grammar-less ; in 
vain will he implore the Bishop of London, 
sitting aloft, to send him one little treatise on 
the Greek article, or one smallest dissertation 
on the verbs in /u." 

r^OVT is the only enemy which I don't wish 
to have at my feet 



86 Bon-Mots. 



CYDNEY SMITH spoke of a certain kind 
of charity as "the integumental charity 
that covers so many sins." 

— <\/V\/V\r— 

A T a large dinner at Holland House, Sydney 
Smith met a French savatit, who took it 

upon himself to annoy the best disposed of the 

company by a variety of freethinking sp)ecula- 

tions. 

"Very good soup this!" slyly struck in 

Smith. 

" Oui, monsieur, cest excellente /" 

"Pray, sir," was the retort, which for that 

time and place was worth a library of argument, 

• ' do you believe in a cook ? " 

— <s/\/\/Vv — 

^OMING suddenly upon the great Jeffrey of 
Edinburgh fame riding upon the children's 
donkey. Smith hailed him thus — 

Witty as Horatius Flaccus, 
As great a Jacobin as Gracchus, 
Short, though not as fat as Bacchus, 
Riding on a little Jackass. 

•T^HERE is a New Zealand attorney just ar- 
rived in London, with 6s. 8d. tattooed all 
over his face. 



Sydney Smith. 87 

g YDNEY SMITH, sitting by a brother clergy- 
man at dinner, observed afterwards that 
his dull neighbour had a twelve-parson power of 
conversation. 

T^HE Archbishop of York, an accomplished 
rider, said to Sydney, who could not ride 
at all, "I hear, Mr Smith, you do not approve 
of much riding for the clergy." 

'* Why, my lord," replied he, "perhaps there 
is not much objection, provided they do not 
ride too well, and stick out their toes pro- 
fessionally." 

/^NE day the conversation turned upon an 
obstinate man who was full of prejudices. 
Sydney Smith, who knew his character and 
opinions, expressed despair, saying, "You might 
as well attempt to poultice the humps off a 
camel's back," 

JEFFREY, Sydney Smith, and other friends 
paid a visit to Deville, the phrenologist, 
incog. 

"This gentleman's case," said Deville, feeling 
Smith's bumps, ' ' is clear enough. His faculties 



are Ihoss of a nahiralist, Hnd I see thi 
gratifies them. This gentleman is al 
happy among his collection of biids 

"Sir," said Sydney Smith, lurning r 
upon him solemnly with open eyes, "I i 
know a fish from a bird." 



" I am a great doctor ; would you like to hear 
some of my medicines?" 
" Oh yes, Mr Sydney." 
"Well, then there is the Gentle- 
jog, a pleasure (o lake it ; the 
Bulldog, for more serious cases; 
Peter's Puke; Heart's Delight, 
the comfort of all the old women 
in the village; Rub-a-dub, a capi- 
tal embrocation ; Dead - stop, 
settles the matter at once; Up- 
with-it-then, needs no explana- 

The visitor was then taken downstairs, and 
entered a room filled entirely on one side with 
medicines, and on the other with every descrip- 
tion of groceries, and household or agricultural 
"n the centre, a large chest forming 



Sydney Smith. 89 

a table, and divided into compartments for 
soap, candles, salt, and sugar. 

" Here you see," said Smith, spreading out 
his hands and laughing, "every human want 
before you, — 

** Man wants but little here below, 
As beef) veal, mutton, pork, lamb, venison show ! '' 

C YDNEY SMITH described his arriving late 
at a dinner, and how everyone was en- 
gaged, " and there was Hallam with his mouth 
full of cabbage and contradiction." 

— ^N/\/\/W— 



■\X7HEN informed that his daughter's 
marriage had been announced in the 
London papers, under Fashionable Intelligence, 
Sydney Smith exclaimed with a merry twinkle 
in his eye, " How absurd ! — Why, we pay our 
bills ! " 



'T^WO young ladies entering a drawing-room, 

someone remarked to Sydney Smith what 

a pretty contrast their different styles of beauty 



90 Bon-Mots. 

made. " Yes," responded he, " Miss L. 
reminds me of a youthful Minerva ; and her 
friend, as a doctor's daughter must, you know, 
be the Venus de Medicis." 

AT a large dinner party, the death of Dugald 
Stewart was announced. The news was 
received with so much levity by a lady of rank, 
who sat by Sydney Smith, that he turned round 
to her saying, ' ' Madam, when we are told of 
the death of so great a man as Mr Dugald 
Stewart, it is usual in civilised society, to look 
grave for at least the space of five seconds. " 

-W\/\/\/Vv.— 

C YDNEY SMITH said in one of his writings 
that a false quantity at the commencement 
of the career of a young man intended for 
public life, was rarely got over ; when a lady 
asked him what a false quantity was, he ex- 
plained it to be in a man the same as a faux 
pas in a woman. 

— WWv— 

" /CORRESPONDENCES," said Smith to a 
friend who complained about having had 
no letters during a temporary absence, "are 
like small clothes before the invention of sus- 
penders — it is impossible to keep them up." 



Sydney Smith. 91 

AN argument arose in which Sydney Smith 
observed how many of the most eminent 
men of the world had been diminutive in person, 
and after naming several among the ancients, 
he added, "Why, look there, at Jeffrey; and 
there is my little friend D — , who has not body 
enough to cover his mind decently with; his 
intellect is improperly exposed." 



C YDNEY SMITH droUy described his friends 
during an influenza epidemic, "and poor 
Hallam was tossing and tumbling in his bed 
when the watchman came by and called * twelve 
o'clock and a starlight night' 
" Here was an opportunity for controversy when 
it seemed most out of the question ! Up Hallam 
jumped with, * I question that, — I question 
that ! Starlight ! I see a star, I admit ; but I 
doubt whether that constitutes starlight.' 

** Hours more of tossing and tumbling ; and 
then comes the watchman again : * Past two 
o'clock, and a cloudy morning. ' 

" * I question that, — I question that,' says 
Hallam, and he rushes to the window and 
throws up the sash — influenza notwithstanding. 
* Watchman ! do you mean to call this a cloudy 
morning? I see a star. And I question its 
being past two o'clock — I question it, I question 
it.'" 



92 Bon-Mots. 

T ESLIE, the Scotch philosopher, had called 
upon Jeffrey, just as the latter was going 
out riding, to ask him to explain some point 
concerning the North Pole. Jeffrey, who was 
in a hurry, exclaimed as he rode off, ** Oh ! 
damn the North Pole 1 ** 

This Leslie complained of to Sydney Smith, 
who entered gravely into his feelings, and told 




him in confidence, that he himself had once 
heard Jeffrey speak disrespectfully of the 
Equator. 

/^H, dear me, yes, you find people ready 
enough to do the Samaritan — without the 
oil and twopence. 



Sydney Smith. 93 

'HERE being a rumour that in the event of 
certain " Church Reforms," all the church 
dignitaries would resign, Smith drew a picture 
of the sad state the country would be in ; having 
to send to America to borrow a bishop : ** Have 
you such a thing as a bishop you could lend us ? 
Shall keep him only a fortnight, and return 
him with a new cassock," &c. 

"IXTHEN Lord John Russell went to Exeter 
after the defeat of the Reform Bill, the 
people along the road w^ere much 
disappointed at his smallness. 
Sydney Smith told them that he 
was much bigger before the Bill 
was thrown out, but he was 
reduced by excessive anxiety about 
the people. This we are told 
brought tears to their eyes. 




O MITH, when he became Canon of St Paul's, 
retained his Bristol appointment, and de- 
scribed his alternation from town to country as 
— dining with the rich in London, and physick- 
ing the poor in the country ; passing from the 
sauce of Dives to the sores of Lazarus. 



94 Bon-Mots, 

TVTY idea of heaven is, esXing foie gras to the 
sound of trumpets. 

— aAJS/S/^ — 

"TJESCRIBING his home-life at Foston-le- 
Clay, Sydney Smith told how, on siaie 
occasions his carpenter. Jack Robinson, took 
off his apron and waited at table, and did pretty 
well too, though he sometimes naturally made 
a mistake, and stuck a gimlet into the bread 
instead of a fork. 

— A/v/vv*- — 

'\^HILE suffering from illness, during which, 
however, his playfulness never left him, 
Sydney Smith said that he felt so weak that 
he verily believed, if the knife were put into his 
hand he should not have strength or energy 
enough to stick it in a Dissenter. 

— <A/\/\/Vv — 

"I^HEN there was a rumour that Rogers was 
to be married, Sydney Smith, who never 
tired of making fun out of the cadaverous poet, 
suggested the two Miss Berrys as bridesmaids, 
the sexton as best-man, and the Rev. Mr Coffin 
(a clergyman known at that time in London) as 
the proper person to officiate at the wedding, 
which would of course take place in the Church 
of St Sepulchre. 



Sydney Smith. 95 

"TJESCRIBING the starting of the Edinburgh 
JReuieWt Sydney Smith said, '* I proposed 
that we should set up a Review. This was 
acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed 
editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh 
to edit the first number of the Review. The 
motto I proposed for the Review was — 
' Tenui Musam meditamur avend. * 
• We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.' 
But this was too near the truth to be admitted ; 
so we took our present grave motto from 
Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am 
sure, read a single line." 

'M'OW I mean not to drink one drop of wine 
to-day, and I shall be mad with spirits. 
I always am when I drink no wine. It is 
curious the effect a thimbleful of wine has upon 
me ; I feel as flat as A.'s jokes ; it destroys my 
understanding. I forget the numbers of the 
Muses, — and think them thirty-nine, of course ; 
and only get myself right again by repeating 
the lines "Descend ye thirty-nine," and finding 
it two feet too long. 

T)ESCRIBING Nether Avon (near Salisbury), 
the scene of his first curacy. Smith spoke 
of it as a pretty feature in a plain face. 



CMITH spoke of the Archdeaoon of New- 
foundland as a man who sits bobbing for 
rod. and pocketing every tenth fish. 



to introduce lo you the ai 



Sydney Smith. 97 

gCOTLAND is only the knuckle end of 
England. 

— ^/y/\/Vv— 

'T'ALLEYRAND was to be found so con- 
stantly at Holland House that Sydney 
Smith said anyone was sure of being Talley- 
randed there. 

CMITH described a dinner at his publishers' 
(Longmans') : Rees carving plerutnque 
secat res. 



'T'ALKING of the bad effects of late hours, 
Sydney Smith remarked of some dis- 
tinguished diner out that there would be on his 
tomb, "He dined late—" "and died early," 
added Luttrell. 



T ORD LANSDOWNE having promised to 
accompany Tom Moore to some Roman 
Catholic religious establishment. Smith charged 
Moore with a design upon Lansdowne's ortho- 
doxy, and recommended that there should be 
some sound Protestant tracts put up with the 
sandwiches in the carriage. 



98 Bon- Mots. 

'T'HERE arose a discussion On the Inferno of 
Diiiile, and Ihe tortures he bad invented. 
" He may be a great poet," said Sydney 
Smith, "but as to inventing tortures, I consider 
him a mere bungler, — no imagination — no 
knowledge of Ihe human heart. If I had taken 
it in band, I would show you what toiture 
really was. For instance (turning to hisfriend, 
Mrs Marcet), you should be doomed to listen 
for a thousand years to conversations between 
Cai-ohne and Emily, where Caroline should 



always give wrong explanations in chemistry, 
and Emily in Ihe end be unable to distinguish 
an acid from an alkali. 

"You, Macaulay, let me consider — oh, you 
should be dumb. False dates and facts of the 
reign of Queen Anne should for ever be shouted 
in your ears, all liberal and honest opinions 
should be ridiculed in your presence ; and you 



Sydney Smith. 99 

should not be able to say a single word during 
that period in their defence." 

"And what would you condemn me to, Mr 
Smith ? " said a young mother. 

"Why you should for ever see those three 
sweet little girls of yours on the point of falling 
downstairs, and never be able to save them. 
There — what tortures are there in Dante equal 
to these?" 

"TJON'T you know, as the French say, there 
are three sexes — men, women, and clergy- 
men. 

T ADY CORK was once so moved by a 
charity sermon, that she begged me to 
lend her a guinea for her contribution. I did 
so. She never repaid me, and spent it on 
herself. 

T TNDER the last regimen of his physician, 
Sydney Smith exclaimed to a friend, 
"Ah! Charles, I wish I were allowed to eat 
even the wing of a roasted butterfly." 

— ^WW— 

'IXT'HAT a pity it is that in England we have 
no anmsements but vice and religion. 



loo Bon-Mots. 

^IXTHEN I began to thump the cushion of 
my pulpit on first coming to Foston, 
as is my wont when I preach, the accumulated 
dust of a hundred and fifty years made such a 
cloud, that for some minutes I lost sight of my 
congregation. 

" AAT'E were savage," said Smith, recalling the 
early days of the Edinburgh Review. 
" I remember how Brougham and I sat trying 
one night how we could exasperate our cruelty 
to the utmost. We had got hold of a poor 
nervous little vegetarian, who had put out a 
poor silly little book, and when we had done 
our review of it, we sat trying to find one more 
chink, one more crevice, through which we 
might drop in one more drop of verjuice to eat 
into his bones." 

— ^A/\/Vv— 

JJOLDING forth to a laughing circle on the 
subject of tithes and the Tripartite 
division, Sydney Smith said, " I am sorry to tell 
you that the great historian, Hallam, has 
declared himself in favour of the Tripartite, 
and contends that it was so, in the age of King 
Fiddlefred; but we of the Church," he con- 
tinued, slapping his breast mock-heroically, 
"say, ' a fig for King Fiddlefred ; we will keep 
our tithes to ourselves.' " 



Sydney Smith. loi 

"TJANTE- in his Purgatorio would have as- 
signed five hundred years of assenting to 
Hallam, and as many to Rogers of praising 
his fellow-creatures. 

— "A/S/V^ — 

•T^ALKING of absence of mind — the oddest 
instance of absence of mind happened to 
me once in forgetting my own name. I knocked 
at a door in London ; asked, Is Mr B. at home? 
" Yes, sir, pray what name shall I say?" 

I looked into the man's face astonished : 
"What name? what name? Ay, that is the 
question. What is my name ? " 

I believe the man thought me mad, but it is 
literally true, that during the space 
of two or three minutes, I had no 
more idea of who I was than if I 
had never existed. I did not 
know whether I was a Dissenter 
or a layman. I felt as dull as 
Sternhold and Hopkins. At last, 
to my great relief, it flashed across me that I 
was Sydney Smith. 

T HEARD of a clergyman who went jogging 
along the road till he came to a turnpike — 
"What is to pay?" 

' ' Pay, sir, for what?" asked the turnpike man. 
" Why, for my horse to be sure." 




I02 Bon-Mots. 

"Your horse, sir? What horse? There is 
no horse, sir." 

• ' No horse ? God bless me ! " said he, 
suddenly looking down l)etween his legs, " I 
thought I was on horseback." 

— WVW— 

CYDNEY SMITH said he was magnanimous, 
when talking to Tom Moore and Miss 
Berry, in avowing that he had never before 
heard of Lamartine. Was it another name for 
the blacking man ! Because, if so, he 's Martin 
here, La-Martine in France, and Martin Luther 
in Germany. 

— ^\/\/\/v>< — 

A FRIEND having said that bread was about 
to be made from sawdust, Sydney Smith 
imagined that people would soon have sprigs 
coming out of them. Young ladies dressing 
for a ball, would say, " Mamma, I 'm beginning 
to sprout." 



CUGGESTED derivations of words being 
offered at a party. Smith gave nincompoop, 
from non compos; cock-a-whoop, from the 
taking the cock out of a barrel of ale,, and 
setting it on the hoop to let the ale flow merrily. 



Sydney Smith. 103 

'T'ALKING of the mixture of character in 
O'Connell, Sydney Smith summed up all 
by saying, " The only way to deal with such a 
man is to hang him up, and erect a statue to 
him under his gallows." 

QYDNEY SMITH'S advice to a writer in 
composing was : — "As a general rule, run 
your pen through every other word you have 
written ; you have no idea what vigour it will 
give your style." 

p REACHING a charity sermon, Sydney 
Smith frequently repeated the assertion 
that, of all nations, the English were most 
distinguished for generosity and the love of 
their species. The collection was less than he 
expected, and he said that he had evidently 
made a great mistake, and that his expression 
should have been that they were distinguished 
for the love of their specie. 

—i\t\j\f^ — 

O OME young person answering on a subject 
in discussion, "I don't know that, Mr 
Smith." 

"Ah, what you don't know would make a 
great book," he said, smiling. 



I04 Bon-Mots. 

A DISCUSSION took place as to whether it 
was better to hear or read Macaulay. 
Rogers said, "the former, because you need 
not listen. " 

" Oh, I'm for the latter," said Sydney Smith, 
' ' because you can't dog's-ear and interline him 
and put him on the shelf when he is talking." 

— A/\/\/Vv — 

T DELIGHT in a stage coach and four, and 
how could I have gone by one as Bishop? 
I might have found myself with a young lady 
of strong Dissenting principles, 
who would have called for help 
to disgrace the Church ; or with 
an Atheist, who told me what 
he had in his heart ; and when 
I had taken refuge on the out- 
side, I might have found an 
Unitarian in the basket ; or if I 
got on the box, the coachman might have told 
me that "he was once one of those rascally 
parsons, but had now taken to a better and an 
honester trade." 

" TF you Whigs send Campbell, Lord Chan- 
cellor to Ireland, you will drive them 
mad," said a friend. 

"And a very short stage to go, my lord," 
replied Smith, "and no postilions to pay." 




Sydney Smith. 105 

'T'HEY now speak of the peculiar difficulties 
and restrictions of the episcopal office. 
I only read in Scripture of two inhibitions — 
boxing and polygamy. 

— A/\/\/V\< — 

COON after Lord Lyndhurst became Lord 
Chancellor, Sydney Smith, who was on 
intimate terms with him, was present at a 
dinner party at his house. The conversation 
turned to the custom in India of widows burn- 
ing themselves in their husbands' funeral pyre. 
For the sake of the argument. Smith began to 
defend the practice, and asserted that no wife 
who truly loved her husband could wish to 
survive him. 

"But if Lord Lyndhurst were to die, you 
would be sorry that Lady Lyndhurst should 
burn herself?" was the sudden and embarrass- 
ing question of one of the guests. 

•'Lady Lyndhurst," came the deliberate 
reply "would, no doubt, as an affectionate 
wife, consider it her duty to burn herself, but 
it would be our duty to put her out ; and, as 
the wife of the Lord Chancellor, Lady Lynd- 
hurst should not be put out like an ordinary 
widow. It should be a State affair. First, a 
procession of the judges, then of the lawyers — " 

" But pray, Mr Smith, where are the clergy?" 

"All gone to congratulate the new Lord 
Chancellor," came the sly response. 



io6 Bon-Mots. 

TDABBAGE always seems at white he 
ready to scorch up some rival man 
science. 

— a/\/\/Vs( — 

/^N having some things charged at 1 
Customs House, Smith enquired, " Um 
what head?" 

" Unmentioned articles," was the reply. 

" I suppose, then, you would tax the Thir 
nine?" 

— aA/\/\/^ — 



" TN the country ! " exclaimed Sydney Smi 
"Oh, in the country I always fear tl 
creation will expire before tea-time." 



— A/\/\/Vv< — 

'T'HE Archbishop of York having met with 
accident, "Yes," said Smith, " he ] 
sprained the Undo Athanasii, which in layn 
is the tendo Achillis." 



—*J\J\JVSF— 



CMITH once gave a neat definition o 
"card-sharper," — "One who sells 'c 
rect cards,' and gets sent to jail because tl 
prove incorrect." 



Sydney Smilh. IQ? 

AFTER allending Lady Essex's privole 
theatricals. Sydney Smilh said that he 
watched with intense anxiety for the slightest 
approach of impropriety, (hat he might carry 
off ihe Archbishop of York as the pious .Cneas 
did his sire. • 



AN officer having been publicly reproved by 
■"■ the Duke of Wellington, Sydney Smith 
said, " Hecan't live, you know: his wife and 



children will be always in tear«, his poiniers 
will bite him, tlic pew opener won't give him 
a seat, the butcher won't trust him, his horse 
will always kick him off— prussic acid will be 



io8 Bon-Mots. 

"MO railroad will be safe until they have made 
a Bishop in partibus. 

— *<j\j\j\t*— 

A • MEMBER of Parliament having said that 

if the Corn Laws were repealed, "we 

should return to the food of our ancestors," 

some friend asked Smith, "What did he 

mean ? '* 

" Thistles, to be sure," was the reply. 

—*j\l\l\t* — 

OYDNEY SMITH having offered to call 
somewhere, was told, "Do, we shall be 
on our knees to you, if you come." 

" I 'm glad to hear it," he replied, " I hke to 
see you in that attitude, as it brings me in 
several hundreds a year." 

"NT EVER gamble at the game of life ; be con- 
tent to play for sixpences ; marriage is too 
high a stake for a wise man to risk. 



CAID Smith to Mrs Grote, "Go where you 
will, do what you please, I have the most 
perfect confidence in your indiscretion,'' 



Sydney Smith. 109 

CYDNEY SMITH once called the railway 
whistle, "the attorney," because it is sug- 
gestive of the shriek of a spirit in torment, • * and 
we have no right to assume that any other class 
of men is damned. ' 



A LADY told Smith that Macaulay had not 
talked quite so much as usual. 
" Why, my dear, how could he? Whenever 
I gave him a chance, you cut in." 

A N acquaintance of Sydney Smith's had been 
platitudinising about the value of travel 
— he of course having tra- 
velled — and at length said, 
" Do you see this stick, sir? 
This stick has been all round 
the world." 

"Indeed," said Smith, "and yet it is only 
a stick." 




CMITH spoke of the knowledge sailors have 
of ships at a great distance ; took them 
off, saying, with a telescope to the eye, " Damn 
her, she 's the ' Delight,' laden with tallow ! " 



I lo Bon-Mots. 

" 'T*HE entertainment of the clergy," Sydney 
Smith described as, "that most solemn 
and terrible duty of a Bishop." 

COMEONE having remarked upon the 
wonderful improvement in a friend since 
his success. " Ah ! " exclaimed Sydney Smith, 
" Praise is the best diet for us after all." 



— A/\/\/V*< — 

r\F the court of Chancery, Sydney Smith said 
that it was like a boa constrictor ; it 
swallowed up the estates of English gentlemen 
in haste, and digested them at leisure. 

— <v\/\/v^.— 

A FRIEND asked Sydney Smith what was 

Puseyism. 

" Puseyism, sir," replied the witty Canon, 

"is inflexion and genuflexion; posture and 

imposture ; bowing to the east, and curtseying 

to the west." 

V\THY are old Tories like last year's wal- 
nuts? Because they are troublesome 
to Pee/. 



Sydney Smith. 1 1 1 

"^XTHEN Sydney Smith got the prebendal 
stall in our cathedral (a Bristolian 
recounts the story), he was lodging in College 
Green ; and as his fame as a convivialist was not 
then so noised and known as ^subsequently, he 
was allowed to dine at home more frequently 
than one would suppose ; and his dinner was 
always a beefsteak, and that beefsteak he 
always bought himself. I was then my own 
purveyor, and there were few days when he 
was in residence that I did not meet him at 
Burge's in Denmark Street (his favourite 
butcher, and mine), overseeing and selecting 
his own cut. After Sydney had described a 
circle with his finger round a cer- 
tain pin-bone, and emphatically 
told the man of fat to ' ' cut there, 
and cut boldly," as the Roman 
augur said, Burge turned to me 
and asked, " And where will you 
be helped, sir?" 
••I'll follow suit," said I, "the cut next to 
Mr Smith's. I can't go wrong with such a 
precedent." 

The Canon's droll eye twinkled ; his large, 
pouting, and somewhat luxurious lip moved with 
that comic twitch that spoke the man, as he 
said, "You 're a wise man, sir; this is one of 
the cases where you can't err if you follow the 
Church, and you'll find your obedience re- 
warded with a good beefsteak." 




112 Bon-Mots, 

C PEAKING of a noble lord, someone said 
that he must have felt himself astonished 
at becoming the father of a clever son. 

"Yes,'" said Sydney Smith, "he must have 
felt like a hen who has hatched a duck, and 
sees it suddenly take to the water." 

— aAJ\^ — 

pASSING through a bye-street behind St 
Paul's, Sydney Smith heaid two women 
abusing each other from opposite houses. 
"They will never agree," said he, "for they 
argue from different premises." 



C YDNEY SMITH said of a hospitable friend 
of his in the Highlands, that he could 
always tell the state of the weather by the 
quantity of whiskey drunk in his house during 
the day ; averring that the glass went up in the 
hand as the mercury went down in the halL 

— /\/\/Vw— 

A COUNTRY squire having been worsted in 

an argument with Sydney Smith, took 

his revenge by remarking, " If I had a son who 

was an idiot, by Jove, I *d make him a parson." 

"Very probably," said Sydney Smith, "but I 

see that your father was of a different mind." 



Sydney Smith. 113' 

AT n public dinner, three gentlemen having 
at the same moment stood up for the 
purpose of saying grace, Sydney Smith, who 
was present, called them "the three Graces." 



T ORD JOHN RUSSELL, remarkable for 
the smallness of his person, as Lord 
Nugent was for the reverse, was expected at a 
house where Sydney Smith was a guest. 

"Lord John comes here to-day," said Sydney 
Smith; "hiscorporeal anti-pait, LordNugenl, 



is already here. 
twallmii John I 1 
pumps in case or a 



1 14 Bon-Mots. 



C PEAKING of a lady's smile, Sydney Smith 
said it was so radiant that it would force 
a gooseberry bush into flower. 

r\F three sisters, Sydney Smith said that they 
were all so beautiful that Paris could not 
have decided between them. 

— WV/W— 

AT one of the Holland House dinner 
parties, Crockford's Club, then forming, 
was talked of, and the noble hostess observed 
that the female passion for diamonds was 
surely less ruinous than the rage for play 
among men. 

"In short, you think," said Rogers, "that 
clubs are worse than diamonds. " 

This excited a laugh, and when it had 
subsided, Sydney Smith wrote the follow- 
ing impromptu most appropriately on a 
card — 

** Thoughtless that * all that's brightest fades,' 
Unmindful of the Knave of Spades, 

The Sexton and his Subs : 
How foolishly we play our parts I 
Our wives on diamonds set their hearts^ 

And we our hearts on clubs V^ 



Sydney Smith. 115 

TXT" HEN a body of horse guards were passing, 
Sydney Smith turned to an officer who 
was standing by him (Lord William Russell), 
saying, ' ' I suppose you must now feel the same 
in looking at those that I do in looking at a 
congregation." 



gOBUS SMITH and Sir Henry Holland 
were talking of the comparative merits of 
the learned professions in affording agreeable 
members of society. 

"Your profession (the law), for instance, 
certainly does not make angels of men," said 
Sir Henry. 

" No," quietly answered Bobus, as he glanced 
with an innocent air at the physician, "no — 
but yours does 1 " 

'pOM MOORE mentioned Kean's having 

eked out his means of 
living before he emerged into 
celebrity by teaching dancing, 
fencing, elocution, and box- 
ing. 

** Elocution and boxing," 
echoed Bobus Smith, "a word 
and a blow." 




ii6 



Bon-Mots. 



•IX7ILKIE was looking over "H.a's" early 
sketches, and admiring some of them 
as works of art, when, pointing to a bit in one 
of them, he said, "That really reminds me of 
Titian." 

" Foliilclan ! " exclaimed Bobus. 




SHERIDAN. 




SHERIDAN. 





BON-MOTS 

OF 

SHERIDAN. 



TXTHILE at Harrow, we are told, Sheridan 
was made a frequent butt for the ridicule 
of the other boys, particularly those who were 
born of great families, or to brighter prospects. 
One of the most troublesome and impertinent 
of these youths, the son of an eminent physician 
in London, took occasion in the playground 
to exercise his wit at the expense of Sheridan, 
as being the son of a player. Sheridan, however, 
quickly retorted, "'Tis true, my father lives 
by pleasing people, but yours lives by killing 
them." 



I20 Bon-Mots. 

/^NE day, meeting two royal dukes walking 

up St James's Street, Sheridan was thus 

addressed by the younger, "I say, Sherry, we 

have just been discussing whether you are a 

greater fool or rogue. What is your own opinion, 

my boy ? " 

Sheridan, having bowed and smiled at the 

compliment, took each of them by an arm, and 

instantly replied, " Why, i' faith, I believe I am 

between both." 

— '^/Ww— 

T OOKING over a number of the Quarterly 
Review one day at Brookes's, Sheridan 
said, in reply to a gentleman who observed that 
the editor, Gifford, had boasted of his power of 
conferring and distributing literary reputation, 
"Very likely, and in the present instance I 
think he has done it so profusely as to have left 
none for himself." 

A DRURY LANE after-piece was chiefly 
remarkable for the introduction of a 
wonderful performing dog, and Sheridan and a 
friend went to see the performance. As they 
entered the green-room, Dignum (who played 
in the piece) said to Sheridan with a woful 
countenance — 

"Sir, there is no guarding against illness : it 
is truly lamentable to stop the run of a success- 
ful piece like this ; but r«dly — " 



Sheridan. iii 

" Really whal^" cried Sheridan, inLernipting 

" I am so unwell ihat I cannol go on longer 
thanlo-nigbt" 

"Youl" eitclaimed Sheridan, "my good 
fellow, you terrified me ; I thought you were 
going to say that the dog was taken ill." 

gURKE in early life had attended a debating 

society, which used to meet al a certain 

baker's. OnamemorableoccasionintbeHouse 



on ihe Ministerial benches, whence he rose and 
made a brillant speech against his ci-devant 

Sheridan, annoyed at the defection, said, ' ' The 



122 Bon-Mots. 

honourable gentleman, to quote his own ex- 
pression, has quitted the camp; he will recollect 
that he quitted it as a deserter, and I sincerely 
hope he will never attempt to return as a spy ; 
but I, for one, cannot sympathise in the 
astonishment with which an act of apostacy so 
flagrant has electrified the House ; for neither 
I, nor the honourable gentleman, have for- 
gotten whence he obtained the weapons which 
he now uses against us : so far from being at 
all astonished at the honourable gentleman's 
tergiversation, I consider it not only character- 
istic, but consistent, that he who in the outset 
of life made so extraordinary a blunder as to go 
to a baker's for eloquence, should finish such a 
career by coming to the House of Commons to 
get bread." 

— W\/W— 

« 
AT the clos^ of Sheridan's unsuccessful 

Westminster contest, it was hoped that 

his noble Caledonian opponent (Lord Cochrane) 

would drown the memory of differences in a 

friendly bottle. 

"With all my heart," said Sheridan, "and 

will thank his lordship to make it a Scotch 

pint." 

TXTHEN Sheridan was asked what wine he 
liked best, he said— other people's. 



le of Coleridge's 
p, drip — nothing 



T-OWARDS Ihe close of Ibe Westminster 
Election, when all the exertions of Sheri- 
dan's friends had failed 



good humour. A sailor, 

ceedings, had climbed 
one of the supports in 
front of the hustings. 
As Sheridan commenced 
his speech, his eye fell 
upon (he lar aloft, and 
he turned Ihe incident to 
ludicrous account by say- 
ing that had he but other five hundred voters 
as upright as the perpendicular gentleman before 
him, they would yet place him where ** was— 
at Ihe head of the pole I 



c 


UMBERLAND, the irritable 


opponent o. 


alln 






fan 


.ilyat 


an early performance of i 


thc5c4«.;/DJ 


Sci. 


inrffl/. 


they were sealed in tl 


le stage-box 



124 Bon-Mots. 

the little children screamed with delight, but 
the less easily pleased fretful author pinched 
them, exclaiming, " What are you laughing at, 
my dear little folks? you should not laugh, my 
angels, there is nothing to laugh at ! " and 
then, in an undertone, "Keep still, you little 
dunces." When Sheridan was told of this, he 
said, "it was ungrateful of Cumberland to 
have been displeased with his children for 
laughing at my comedy, for when I went to see 
his tragedy I laughed from beginning to end," 

— A/\/\/Vv. — 

nrO Lord Holland Sheridan said one day: 
" They talk of avarice, lust, ambition, as 
great passions. Vanity is the great command- 
ing passion of all. It is this that produces the 
most grand and heroic deeds, or impels to the 
most dreadful crimes. Save me from this 
passion, and I can defy the others. They are 
mere urchins, but this is a giant." 



CHER I DAN was once talking to a friend 
about the Prince Regent, who took great 
credit to himself for various public occurrences, 
as if they had been directed by his political 
skill, or foreseen by his political sagacity ; ' ' but, " 
said Sheridan, after expatiating on this, "what 
his Royal Highnss more particularly prides 
himself upon, is the late excellent harvest." 



Sheridan. 125 

AN unfortunate dramatist whose comedies, 
when returned upon his hands, were 
generally reduced by the managers from five 
acts to two, or even one, complained in wrath 
and bitterness to Sheridan, who attempted to 
console him by saying, " Why, my good fellow, 
what I would advise you is, to present a comedy 
of a scare of acts, and the devil will be in it if 
five be not saved." 

TX7HEN seated at his window not long before 

his death, seeing a hearse go by, Sheridan 

exclaimed, "Ah, that is the carriage fl/?^r a///" 

— v\/\/W— 

CHAW, having lent Sheridan five hundred 
pounds, dunned him for it. One day, 
after rating Sheridan, he said he must have the 
money. Sheridan, having played off some of 
his plausible wheedling upon him, ended by 
saying that he was very much in want of twenty- 
five pounds to pay the expenses of a journey 
he was about to take, and he knew Shaw would 
be good-natured enough to lend it to him. 

'•'Pon my word," said Shaw, "this is too 
bad ; after keeping me out of my money in so 
shameful a manner you now have the face to 
ask me for more ; but it won't do — it is most 
disgraceful, and I must have my money." 

"My dear fellow," replied Sheridan, "do 



A FRIENDLY wine merchttnl, Challie, 

dining with Sheridan when a noble vis 

invited ihe wil down to his country place 

Sheiidan said (ha.t 

to accept the inviiat 



"By-lhe-bye, Chall 
said Sheridan playfi 

tal banker I " 
A banker I " echoed Cha 
ghing heartily at the ic 
"a banker, Mr Sheridan I 
so ? a banker and a wine merchant ? " 

"The exact thing, my dear friend; 
uniting the business of the wine merchant 
banker, you could manage a capital busin 
since for those who look your draughts c 
night you could reciprocate by honouring 1 
drafts in the morning." 



Sheridan. 127 

/^NE day a creditor came into Sheridan's 
room for a bill, and found him seated 
before a table on which two or three hundred 
pounds in gold and notes were strewed. 

"It's no use looking at that, my good 
fellow," said Sheridan, "that is all bespoken 
for debts of honour. " 

"Very well," replied the tradesman, tearing 
up his security and throwing it on the fire, 
" now mine is a debt of honour." 

" So it is, and must be paid at once," said 
Sheridan, handing him over the money. 

— WWv^ 

/^ANNING had nicknamed Lord Sidmouth 
the Doctor, he being the son of a 
physician, an intimate friend of the great 
Lord Chatham. When the Scotch members 
deserted the Addington Ministry upon a try- 
ing vote, Sheridan said to the Premier, across 
the table of the House, " Doctor ! the Thanes 
fly from thee ! " 

TXT^HEN Garrick retired from Drury Lane, 
and sold his half interest in the theatre, 
Sheridan purchased two-flfths of that half for 
ten thousand pounds. All his friends and 
acquaintances were curious to know how be got 



128 Bon- Mots. 

the money ; all kinds of rumours were rife, and 
one friend went so far as to ask the dramatist 
point blank where the money came from. 

"Your importunities have prevailed," at 
length replied Sheridan, with a convulsive 
effort, assuming an extraordinary gravity of 
manner, and with a tremulous, subdued, half- 
suppressed voice, expressive of greatest agita- 
tion, "and your curiosity must be gratified, 
but I had hoped to have kept the secret con- 
fined within my own breast, and to have borne 
with its consuming fires even to the grave." 

" Mr Sheridan, I — I really do not wish," 
exclaimed the other, but he was interrupted ere 
the sentence could be concluded by the stem 
theatrical air and gesture of Sheridan, as he 
advanced towards him. 

" Ay, sir, to the grave, where we might both 
have mouldered and been forgotten." 

" Really, and seriously, Mr Sheridan, I have 
no desire to inquire into your secrets." 

"But you have forced it from me, and 
involved yourself in inextricable danger. Be 
the peril, therefore, on your own head, since 
you have obtained from me a confession which 
no tongue should utter or ear should hear, and 
which must necessarily involve yourself, by the 
keeping of my secret, in my guilt." 

" Mr Sheridan, this is really too serious a 
matter — I beg your pardon— I really must beg 
your pardon, and — good morning." 



Sheridan. 129 

"Stay, stay; yet hotd — let us see that we are 

not observed, ihat no eavesdropper catch 

the sound of our voices, or carry away the 

slartUng evidence of our daring. " 

"What in the name of heaven, Mr Sheridan, 

do you allude to ? " 
" Heaven has nothing 10 do with the damning 

deedl" 
The friend, paralysed, sunk almost fainting 

in his chair, with the smell 

of brimstone in his nostrils, 

and the configuration of Friar 

Bacon floating before his 

eyes. Sheridan approached 

the door of the apartment 

with slow and measured step, 

and holding the handle. 

turned suddenly round upon 
his bewildered friend — 
"Swearl swear!" he cried, 
"never 10 reveal my secret I" 

"Oh, I never will, positive 
upon my honour, never." 

"lamsalisfied. Well then, '"—pausmK 
for a moment, and assuming great anguish with 
remorse depicted on his countenance, he con- 
tinued, " since it must be so, I have discovered." 
— and elevating his voice to the highest pilch, 
he roared out,— " the philosopher's stone!" 
saying which, he darted out of the room, 
banging the door after him, and Ic.iving his 



130 Bon- Mots. 

bewildered auditor to revolve the matter in his 
own mind, and digest it as he could. Sheridan 
was a capital actor in his own jokes, and it was 
a capital joke. 



CHERIDAN, with his son Tom, was dining 
one day at Peter Moore's, Tom being 
then in a nervous debilitated state. The 
servant, in passing quickly between the guests 
and the fire-place struck down the plate warmer. 
This made a strange rattle, and caused Tom 
Sheridan to start and tremble. Peter Moore, 
provoked at this, rebuked the servant and said, 
" I suppose you have broken all the plates ? " 
" No, sir," said the servant, " not one." 
"No?" exclaimed Sheridan, "then, damn it, 
you have made all that noise for nothing." 

— v\/\/W— 

A T one of Sheridan's Parliamentary election 
contests, a person on horseback had pene- 
trated the crowd near the hustings, when the 
horse became restive, and there was a loud 
outcry against the intrusion. While some 
strove to appease the clamour, others urged 
Sheridan to proceed. 

" Gentlemen," replied he, "when the chorus 
of T/te Horse and his Rider is finished, I shall 
continue." 



Sheridan. 131 

r\N the subject of the liberty of the press 
{in 1810) Sheridan was very eloquent 
when he exclaimed of his opponents in Parlia- 
ment : — " Give them a corrupt House of 
Lords ; give them a venal House of Commons ; 
give them a tyrannical Prince ; give them a 
truckling court, — and let me have an unfettered 
press ; I will defy them to encroach a hair's- 
breadth upon the liberties of England." 

TT is said that Sheridan never gave Monk 
Lewis any of the profits of The Castle 
Spectre. One day Monk Lewis being in com- 
pany with him, said, "Sheri- 
dan, I will make you a large 
bet." 

Sheridan, who was always 
ready to make a wager, asked 
eagerly, "What bet?" 

"All the profits of Castle 
Spectre,^ said I^wis. 

" I will tell you what," re- 
torted Sheridan, " I will make you a very small 
one — what it is worth." 

— WVW— 

'T'HE HON. Mr S. having finished a tragedy, 

sent it to Sheridan for performance at 

Drury Lane. The proprietor looked at it, and 




132 Bon-Mots. 

laid it on the table. In a few days the author 
called. 

"Well now, my dear Sheridan, pray what 
do you think of it? My friend Cumberland 
has promised me a prologue ; and I dare say, 
for the interest of the theatre, you will have no 
objection to supply me with an epilogue ? " 

"Trust me, my dear sir," replied Sheridan 
drily, " it will never come to that, depend on *t." 

— a/\/\/V\i — 

nrHE chronic state of money difficulties in 
which Sheridan was situated is notorious. 
At one time, Hanson, a furnishing ironmonger, 
was rather a heavy creditor, so was Gunter, the 
confectioner, but for a much smaller amount. 
Gunter had sent in his bill, demanding im- 
mediate payment, on the morning when Hanson 
called for settlement of his own. Gunter's bill 
lay upon the table. Hanson was pressing, 
Sheridan equally apologetic. 

"But I must have my account settled, Mr 
Sheridan ; promises are not payment, and I 
cannot wait any longer." 

" Well, my dear sir, if you can show me the 
way how to settle it, I shall most cheerfully 
comply with your wishes," was the calm reply. 

" Me show you," retorted Hanson, "how am 
I to know your resources ? " 

"You know Gunter? perhaps you will have 



Sheridan. 133 

no objection to take his bill," said Sheridan, 
with a merriment in his eye, as the comical 
thought struck him, while glancing at the paper 
on the table. 

" Not at all ; I know Gunter to be a safe, 
good man." 

" Well then," handing the folded f)aper over 
to the expectant tradesman, " there 's his bill — 
take it, make what use of it you can, and when 
you have done with it, I must beg of you to 




return it receipted," and, bowing politely, he 
left the bewildered Hanson to the acceptance 
or rejection of the joke, as might best suit 
his fancy. 

TN the House of Commons Pitt rallied 
Sheridan somewhat severely on his connec- 
tion with the theatre. ' ' No man admitted more 
than he did the abilities of that right honour- 
able gentleman, the elegant sallies of his 



134 Bon-Mots. 

thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his 
diamatic turns, and his epigrammatic points; 
and if they were reserved for a proper stage, 
they would no doubt receive what the right 
honourable gentleman's abilities always did 
receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it 
would be his fortune sui flausu gaudere theatri! 
But this was not the proper scene for the 
exhibition of these elegances, and he therefore 
must beg leave to call the attention of the 
House to the serious consideration of the very 
important questions before them." 

Sheridan in his reply proved himself quite 
equal to the occasion, and thus replied to the 
young Minister : " He need not comment upon 
that particular sort of personality which the 
right honourable gentleman had thought proper 
to introduce, the propriety, the taste, the gentle- 
manly point of it must have been obvious to the 
House. But," said Mr Sheridan, ' ' let me assure 
the right honourable gentleman that I do now, 
and will at any time when he chooses to repeat 
this sort of allusion, meet it with the most 
sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more, 
flattered and encouraged by the right honour- 
able gentleman's panegyric on ray talents, if I 
ever again engage in the compositions he 
alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of 
presumption — to attempt an improvement on 
one of Ben Jonson's best characters — the 
character of the Angry Boy in the ' Alchymist. ' " 



Sheridan. 1 35 

"DEING on a Parliamentary Committee on 
one occasion, Sheridan happened to enter 
the room when most of the members were 
present and seated, though business had not 
yet commenced ; when, perceiving that there 
was not another seat in the rbom, he asked with 
great readiness: "Will any gentleman move 
that I may take the chair f" 

— ^\Ww— 

T ORD THURLOW attended the representa- 
tion of Pizarro, but sunk into a deep 
sleep during RoUa's celebrated address to the 
Peruvians. 

•' Poor fellow," said Sheridan, on being 
informed of the circumstance, " I suppose he 
fancied he was on the Bench. " 



A PARTY of Sheridan's friends insisted on 
seeing him to his home when he was very 
tipsy. When they reached the street leading 
to the square in which he lived, he required 
them to leave him ; they did so, but after they 
had proceeded a short distance, turned round 
and saw him standing where they had left him, 
and using his umbrella like a person who is 
counting objects before him. 



136 Bon-Mots. 

"What on earth, Sherry, are you about?" 
they asked. 

"Do you not see," said he, "that all the 
houses in the square are going round and 
round? Well, I am waiting till mine cOmes 
by, and then I shall just step in." 

'T'HE Prince Regent having expatiated on the 
beauty of Dr Erasmus Darwin's opinion, 

that the reason why the bosom of a beautiful 
woman possesses such a fascinat- 
ing effect on man is because he 
derived from that source the 
first pleasurable sensations of his 
infancy, Sheridan very happily 
ridiculed the idea : ' ' Such children, 
then, as are brought up by hand 
must needs be indebted for simi- 
lar sensations to a very different 

object ; and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt 

any intense emotions of amatory delight at 

beholding a pap-spoon !" 

'T'O a creditor who peremptorily required pay- 
ment of the interest due on a long standing 
debt, Sheridan jocularly observed, "My dear 
sir, you know it is not my interest to pay the 
principal ; nor is it my principle to pay the 
interest" 




Sheridan. 137 

A CREDITOR whom Sheridan had perpet- 
ually avoided, met him at last plump, 
coming out of Pall Mall from St James's Palace. 
There was no possibility of avoiding him, but 
Sheridan never lost his presence of mind. 

"Oh," said he, " that 's a beautiful mare you 
are on." 

"D'ye think so!" 

• ' Yes, indeed ! How does she trot ? " 

The creditor, flattered, told him he should 
see, and immediately put her into full trotting 
pace. The instant he trotted off Sheridan 
turned into Pall Mall again, and was out of 
sight in a moment. 

"Y^ZHEN Pitt proposed a tax on female 
servants, Sheridan declared that it could 
be considered in no other light than as a bounty 
to bachelors, and a penalty upon propagation. 

— v\/\/Vv— 

A MEMBER of Parliament having actually 
proposed a tax on tombstones as one 
which could meet with no objection, Sheridan 
replied, ' ' that the only reason why the proposed 
tax could not be objected to was, because those 
out of whose prop>erty it was to be {>aid would 
know nothing of the matter, as they must be 
dead before the demand could be made ; but 
then, after all, who knows but that it may not 



138 Bon- Mots. 

be rendered unpopular in being represented as 
a tax upon persons who, having paid the debt 
of nature, must prove that they have done so, 
by having the receipt engraved upon their 
tombs." 

A N M.P., Mr Michael Angelo Taylor, had 
acquired the name of "the Chicken," by 
saying that he always delivered his legal opinion 
in the House, and elsewhere, with great humility, 
l>ecause he was young, and might, with pro- 
priety, call himself a chicken in (he profession of 
the law. Sheridan in a humorous speech, 
which produced repeated peals of laughter, 
took notice of the diffidence of Mr Taylor, as 
connected with another observation of the same 
gentleman, "that he should then vote with the 
Opposition because they were in the right, but 
that in all probability he should never vote with 
them again ; " thus presaging that for the future 
they would be always wrong. 

" If such be his augury," said Sheridan, " I 
cannot help looking upon this chicken as a bird 
of ill-omen, and wish that he had continued side 
by side with the full-grown cock (alluding to 
Bearcroft), who will, no doubt, long continue to 
feed about the gates of the Treasury, to pick up 
those crumbs which are there plentifully 
scattered about to keep the chickens and 
full-grown fowls together." 



Sheridan. 139 

gYRON, writing 10 Tom Moore, said :— 
Perhaps you Jieard of a late answer of 
Sheridan's to the walchmnn, who found him 
liereft of that divine particle of air called 
reason. He, the watchman, who found Sheny 



in the street fuddled and bewi 
almost insensible, said, " Who are. 

No answer. 

"What's your name?" 

A hiccup. 

"WhafsyournameP" 

tone, '■ Wilierforccr 



140 Bon-Mots. 

JuTRS CHOLMONDELEY asked to have an 
acrostic on her name. "An acrostic on 
your name," echoed Sheridan, "would be a 
formidable task ; it must be so long that I 
think it should be divided into cantos." 

It was during the same conversation that 
Sheridan said a lady should not write verses till 
she is past receiving them. 

— -vv/VW— 

TZELLY describes his appearance in the 
character of an Irishman in a Drury Lane 
Opera : — "My friend Johnstone took great pains 
to instruct me in the brogue, but I did not feel 
quite up to the mark ; and, after all, it seems 
my vernacular phraseology was not the mo^t 
perfect ; for when the Opera was over, Sheridan 
came into the green-room and said, * Bravo ! 
Kelly ; very well, indeed ; upon my honour I 
never before heard you speak such good English 
in all my life.' " 

— A/\/\J\^ — 



C HER ID AN 'S cool assurance never deserted 
him. Late one night, when in company 
with Challie, the wine -merchant, they were 
stopped by footpads. Sheridan quietly ad- 
dressed them saying, "My friend can accom- 
modate you, and as for myself, I '11 tell you 
what I can do, I can give you my note of hand. " 



Sheridan. 141 

TN a speech on the existence of seditious 
practices in England, Sheridan gave the well- 
known and happy turn to the motto of the Sun 
newspaper, which was at that time known to be 
the organ of the alarmists : — There was one paper 
in particular, said to be the property of members 
of that House, and published and conducted 
under their immediate direction, which had for 
its motto a garbled part of a beautiful sentence, 
when it might with much more propriety, have 
assumed the whole — 

** Solem quis dicere falsum 
Audeat f I lie etiam cescos instare tumultus 
Scepe monet, fraudemque et operta tumescere 
bellar 

—»j\t\i\i\f— 

TN the same speech Sheridan brilliantly ridi- 
culed the people who took part in the pre- 
vailing panic: — The alarm had been brought 
forward in great pomp and form on Saturday 
morning. At night all the mail coaches were 
stopped ; the Duke of Richmond stationed 
himself, among other curiosities, at the Tower ; 
a great municipal officer, too, had made a 
discovery exceedingly beneficial to the people 
of this country. He meant the Lord Mayor of 
London, who had found out that there was at 
the King's Arms at Cornhill a Debating Society, 
where principles of the most dangerous tendency 
were propagated; where people went to buy 



142 Bon-Mots. 

treason at sixpence a head; where it was re- 
tailed to them by the glimmering of an inch of 
candle: and five minutes, to be measured by 
the glass, were allowed to each traitor to 
perform his part in overturning the State. 

— -vVVW— 

TT'EMBLE and Sheridan were drinking to- 
gether one evening, says Michael Kelly 
in his Reminiscences, when Kemble complained 
of the want of novelty at Drury 
Lane Theatre, and said that he, 
as manager, felt uneasy. 

" My dear Kemble," said 
Sheridan, "don't talk of griev- 
ances now." 

But Kemble still kept on, say- 
ing, " Indeed, we must seek for 
novelty, or the theatre will sink — novelty, and 
novelty alone, can prop it." 

" Then," replied Sheridan, with a smile, " if 
you want novelty, act Hamlet and have music 
played between your pauses. * 

— 'Af\/\l\f — 

r*ONGREVE'S plays are, I own, somewhat 
licentious, but it is barbarous to mangle 
them ; they are like horses — when you deprive 
them of their vice, they lose their vigour. 




Sheridan. 143 

CHERIDAN made his appearance one day 
in a pair of new boots, which attracted 
the notice of some friends. 

"Now, guess," said he, "how I came by 
these boots?" 

Many probable guesses then took place. 
** No," said Sheridan, "no, you 've not hit it, nor 
ever will — I bought them, and paid for them!" 

T N a speech on the India Bill, Mr Scott (after- 
wards Lord Eldon) indulged in a licence 
of Scriptural parody, and had affected to 
discover the rudiments of the Bill in a chapter 
of the Book of Revelations, — Babylon being the 
East India Company, Mr Fox and his seven 
commissioners the Beast with the seven heads, 
and the marks on the hand and forehead, im- 
printed by the Beast upon those around him, 
meaning, evidently, he said, the peerages, 
pensions, and places distributed by the 
Minister. 

In answering this strange sally of forensic 
wit, Sheridan quoted other passages from the 
same book, which, the reporter gravely assures 
us, "told strongly for the Bill," and which 
proved that Lord Fitzwilliam and his fellow- 
commissioners, instead of being the seven heads 
of the Beast, were seven angels, "clothed in 
pure and white linen ! " 



144 



Bon-Mots. 



r\N the success of a wildly romantic play by 
Monk Lewis, Sheridan was asked why 
he had desecrated the stage by such an abortion. 
— "Abortion, my dear friend, look to the 
treasury," was the reply. "I have long en- 
tertained the idea of converting JRomeo and 
Juliet into a comic opera ; despatching the 
fiery Tybalt with the bravura ' The soldier 




tired ' ; Mercutio to the lively air of ' Over 
the hills and far away ' ; and winding up with 
a grand scene in the graveyard, with the shades 
of the Capulets dancing among the tombstones 
to the solemn dirge of • Where are you going, 
my pretty maid ? I am going a-milking, sir, 
she said.' Won't it be capital? Lewis's 
success ensures my own." 



Sheridan. 145 

T ET me have but the periodical press on my 
side, and there should be nothing in his 
country which I would not accomplish. 

— 'AAJVr— 

TXTHEN someone told Sheridan that the 
quantity of wine and spirits which he 
drank would destroy the coat of his stomach, 
he replied, "Well, then, my stomach must 
just digest in its waistcoat. 

OOGERS and Sheridan were talking about 
actors. 

' • Your admiration of Mrs Siddons is so 
high," said Rogers, "that I wonder you never 
made open love to her." 

"To her!" exclaimed Sheridan, "to that 
magnificent and appalling creature ; I should 
as soon have thought of making love to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury. " 

— W\/W— 



CIR JOHN HIPPISLEY, who had been 
envoy at an Italian court, occupied himself 
on his return to Parliament chiefly with the 
Catholic question. On this subject he was 
remarkable for supporting his speeches with 

K 



146 Bon-Mots. 

documents of the dryest and most antiquated 
species. 

•• I never hear that man speak," said a leader 
of the Opposition, "that I don't think I hear 
the ghost of some old Pope." 

'• Ay, of Pope Joan," added Sheridan. 

A DRAMA was presented to Sheridan, in 
which the characters amounted to no less 
than fifty-six. 

"What's this? the new army list?" asked 
Sheridan. 

"Nothing of the kind, sir," said the intro>> 
ducer, "it is on an Irish story, and by an 
Irishman." 

Sheridan glanced over a few leaves and saw 

that it was altogether inadmissible. " Tell my 

countryman that as a drama there can be no 

hope of its success, partly owing to the reduced 

population of London ; but it might be turned 

into a history of the Rebellion, and the list at 

the beginning would do for the muster at the 

levy en masse." 

— W\/Vv— 

T^ENTION having been made in his presence 
of a tax upon mile-stones, Sheridan said 
that such a tax would be unconstitutional, — as 
they were a race that could not meet to 
remonstrate, 



TF ihe thought is slow to come, a glass of 
good wine encourages it, and, when it does 
come, a glass of good wine rewards it. 

" "pHE life of a manager of a Iheatre," Sheri- 
dan said, "was like the life of the 
ordinary at Newgale, — a conslant superintend- 
ence of executions. The nutnbcr of authors 
whom he was forced to extinguish was a 
perpetual literary mas- — - 
that made St Ban 
mew's altogether shri 
comparison. Play-wi 
singly, accounted fo 
employment of tbal 



with iron-moulded I 

visages, and study- 
singly accounted for 
the rise of paper, 

which had exhausted the rags of England and 
Scotland, and had almost stripped off the last 
covering of Ireland. He had counted plays 
until calculation sank under the number; and 
every rejected play of them all seemed like 
the clothes of a Spanish beggar, to turn into a 
living, restless, merciless, indefatigable progeny." 



148 Bon -Mots. 

T ADY ARGYLE asked Sheridan to explain 
"why our young men of birth persist in 
dressing, looking, and talking like boxers, 
grooms, and coachmen?" 

"My dear Madam, I never had a turn for 
family secrets," replied Sheridan; "but I 
suspect birth to be the general cause." 

— W\/\/Vv— 

'IIT'HEN Pitt's India Bill was brought up from 
Committee, it had twenty-one new 
clauses added, which were to be known by the 
letters from A to W, Sheridan said he hoped 
that some gentleman of ability would invent 
three more clauses for X, Y, and Z, to complete 
the alphabet, which would then render the 
bill a perfect hornbook for the use of the 
Minister, and the instruction of rising politicians. 

— <\WVv^ 

■QURING the "O.P. Row," when Sheridan 
was conversing with Kemble on the pro- 
spect of a speedy end being put to the popular 
disturbance, Kemble said, " that he had a hope 
of its conclusion from the trial of Clifford v. 
Brandon." 

"For my part," replied Sheridan, "I see 
nothing in your hope, but an aitch and an O. P." 



Sheridan. 149 

CHER I DAN'S parliamentary colleagues had 
brought in an extremely unpopular 
measure, on which they were defeated. He 
then said, that he had often heard of people 
knocking out their brains against a wall ; but 
never before knew of anyone building a wall 
expressly for the purpose. 

— A/\/\/\^ — 

A CERTAIN noble lord having no less than 
nine nominees in the House of Commons, 
they were nicknamed the nine - pins. Burke 
made an able and satirical reply to a speech of 
one of these members, a reply that was received 
with a loud cheer. Fox entering the House at 
the moment, enquired of Sheridan the cause 
of it. 

"Oh! nothing of any consequence," replied 
the wit, "only Burke knocking down one of the 
nine-pins.'* 

— A/\/\/\^— 

A CERTAIN Doctor was remarkable for his 
reluctance to contribute to public insti- 
tutions. He was at length prevailed on to 
attend a charity sermon in Westminster. After 
the sermon, the plate was Ijanded round the 
vestry. Fox and Sheridan were present. 

*' The Doctor has absolutely given his pound, 
said Fox. 



I50 Bon-Mots. 

"Then," said Sheridan, "he must tbi: 
that he is going to die." 

"Pooh I" repUed Fox, "even Judas thn 
away twice the money." 

"Yes; but how long was it before he W 
hanged?" relorled Sheridan. 



jyjrcHAEL KELLY in his amusing A-OBjn- 

iscrnccs h.is tlie following good story of 

Sheridan :~One evening after we had dined 




Instead of six dozen, he 



Sheridan. 151 

had sent me sixteen. I was observing that it 
was a greater quantity than I could afford to 
keep, and expressed a wish to sell p>art of it. 

**My dear Kelly," said Sheridan, "I would 
take it off your hands with all my heart, but I 
have not the money to pay for it ; I will, how- 
ever, give you an inscription to place over the 
door of your saloon : write over it, * Michael 
Kelly, composer of wines and importer of 
music' " 

I thanked him, and said, '^ I will take the 
hint, sir, and be a composer of all wines, except 
old Sherry ; for that is so notorious for its in- 
toxicating and pernicious qualities that I should 
be afraid of poisoning my customers with it." 

The above story has been told in many 
ways ; but as I have written it here, is the fact. 
He owned I had given him a Roland for his 
Oliver, and very often used to speak of it in 
company. 



CHER I DAN'S maiden speech in the House 
of Commons was far from being successful. 
When it was over, he went to the reporters' 
gallery, and asked a friend, Woodfall, how he 
had succeeded. ** I am sorry to say I do not 
think this is your line," said that candid friend, 
"you had much better have stuck to your 
former pursuits. " 
On hearing this, Sheridan rested his head on 



152 Bon-Mots. 

his hands for a moment, and then vehemently 
exclaimed, " It is in me, however, and, by God, 
it shall come out." 

J^RURY LANE THEATRE was destroyed 
by fire in February 1809. Sheridan was 
in the House of Commons when he learned 
that the fire had broken out. He hastened to 
the scene, and with wonderful fortitude 
witnessed the destruction of his property. He 
sat at the Piazza Coffee-house taking some 
refreshment ; and on a friend remarking to 
him how calmly he bore the ruin, Sheridan 
merely said that surely a man might be allowed 
to take a glass of wine at his own fireside. 

T ORD DERBY once applied at Drury Lane 
to Mr Sheridan, with much dignity, for 
the arrears of I>ady Derby's (nee Farren) salary, 
and vowed that he would not stir from the room 
till it was paid. 

"My dear Lord," said Sheridan, "this is 
too bad ; you have taken from us the brightest 
jewel in the world, and you now quarrel with 
us for a little of the dust she has left behind 
her." 



Sheridan. 153 

/^N the Prince entering the Thatched-house 
Tavern and " raising his spirits up by 
pouring spirits down" Sheridan gave these 
impromptu hnes — 

" The Prince came in, and said 'twas cold, 
Then took a mighty rummer, 
When nvaJlow after swaliow came, 
And then he swore 'twas summer." 

-^/v/y/VVv — 

T ORD BELGRAVE having clinched a 
speech in the House of Commons with 
a long Greek quotation, Sheridan, in reply, 
admitted the force of the quota- 
tion so far as it went, "but," 
said he, "had the noble lord 
proceeded a little further and 
completed the passage, he would 
have seen that it applied the 
other way." 

Sheridan then delivered some- 
thing, ore rotundo, which had all 
the ais, ois, ous, kon, and kos, that 
give the world assurance of a 
Greek quotation ; upon which, Lord Belgrave 
very promptly and handsomely complimented the 
honourable member on his readiness of recollec- 
tion, and fmnkly admitted that the continuation 
of the passage had the tendency ascril)ed to it 
by Mr Sheridan, and that he had overlooked it 
at the moment when he gave his quotation. 




154 Bon-Mots. 

On the breaking up of the House, Fox, who 
piqued himself on knowing some Greek, went 
up to Sheridan and asked him, " Sheridan, 
how came you to be so ready with that passage? 
It certainly is as you say, but I was not aware 
of it before you quoted it." 

Sheridan had indeed successfully hoaxed the 
House, for his "quotation" was quite im- 
promptu and entirely innocent of Greek ! 

'T'HE scenery of Drury Lane was one evening 
on fire. The audience became alarmed 
and in an instant the confusion would have 
been dreadful. Suett rushed upstairs to Sheri- 
dan to tell him that the fire was extinguished, 
and that he would go and tell the house. 
" You fool," exclaimed Sheridan, " don't 
mention the word ' fire ' ; run and tell them 
that we have water enough to drown them all, 
and make a face." 

The expedient succeeded ; the house was calm 
in an instant, and was in a tumult of laughter 
only, at the strange grimaces of which Suett was 
such a master. 

— vv\/W-- 

T^HEN Sheridan lay upon his death-bed, 

his doctor thought that as a forlorn hope 

a certain operation might be performed. He 



Sheridan. 155 

enquired of his patient, " Have you ever under- 
gone nn opemlion, Mr Sheridan?" 

With a drollery which even pain and sufTering 
had not repressed. Sheridan replied, "Yes, — 
when sitting for my portrait, or to have my 



metaphor which one oT Ihe opposing counset 



roughly handled alterwards. Sheridan re] 
■■it was the first time in his life he hnc 
lieard of sptciat pleading on a metaphor, 
bill itf iisdiclment against a Irope. Bui 
was the lurn of the learned counsel's mind 
when he attempted lo be humorous, m 
could he found, and, when serious, no (ac 
visible;" 



156 Bon- Mots. 

"D ICHARDSON had set his mind upon going 
down to Bognor with Mr Sheridan on one 
particular occasion, because it happened that 
Lord Thurlow, with whom he was on terms of 
intimacy was staying there. "So," said 
Richardson, "nothing can be more delightful, 
what with my favorite diversion of sailing — my 
enjoyment of walking on the sand — the plea- 
sure of arguing with Lord Thurlow, and tak- 
ing my snuff by the seaside, I shall be in my 
glory." 

"Well," said Sheridan, " down he went, full 
of anticipated joys. The first day, in stepping 
into the boat to go sailing, he tumbled down, 
and sprained his ankle, and was obliged to be 
carried into his lodgings, which had no view of 
the sea; the following morning he sent for a 
barber to shave him, but there being no pro- 
fessional barber nearer than Chichester, he was 
forced to put up with a fisherman, who volun- 
teered to officiate, and cut him severely just 
under his nose, which entirely prevented his 
taking snuff; and the same day at breakfast, 
eating prawns too hastily, he swallowed the 
head of one, horns and all, which stuck in his 
throat, and produced such pain and inflam- 
mation, that his medical advisers would not 
allow him to speak for three days. So thus 
ended, in four and twenty hours, his walking 
— his sailing — his snuff taking — and his argu- 
ments." 



Sheridan. 157 

A DEBATE taking place as to the putting 
down of Sunday newspapers, Sheridan 
observed that there was an exception in the law 
in favour or selling mackerel on the Lord's day, 
and people might think stale news as bad as 
stale mackerel I 



W«: 






[THEN Sheridan was coming up to town in 
le of Ihe public coaches for the purpose of 
canvassing Westminster, ■>* 
the lime when Paull was 
opponent, he found him 

minster electors. In 
course of conversation 1 
of them asked the other 
whom he meant lo give 
vole. When his friend 
plied. "To Paull, certain 
for, though I think him 
but a shabby sort of a 
fellow, I would vole for 
anyone rather than Ihal 
rascal Sheridan ! " 

"Do you know Sheri- 
dan?" asked the stranger. 

"Not I, sir," answered the genlleman, "nor 
should I wish to know him," 

The conversation dropped here; but when 



1 58 Bon-Mots. 

the party alighted to breakfast, Sheridan called 
the other gentleman aside, and said — 

• ' Pray who is that very agreeable friend of 
yours? He is one of the pleasantest fellows I ever 
met with, and should be glad to know his name." 

•'His name is Mr Richard Wilson ; he is an 
eminent lawyer, and resides in Lincoln's Inn 
Fields." 

Breakfast over, the party resumed their seats 
in the coach ; soon after which Sheridan turned 
the discourse to the law. " It is," he said, " a 
fine profession. Men may rise from it to the 
highest eminence in the State ; and it gives vast 
scope to the display of talent : many of th^ most 
virtuous and noble characters recorded in our 
history have been lawyers ; I am sorry, however, 
to add, that some of the greatest rascals have 
also been lawyers ; but of all the rascals of 
lawyers I ever heard of, the greatest is one 
Wilson, who lives in Lincoln's Inn Fields." 

" I am Mr Wilson," said the gentleman. 

"And I am Mr Sheridan," was the reply. 

The jest was instantly seen ; they shook 
hands, and instead of votingagainst the facetious 
orator, the lawyer exerted himself warmly in 
promoting his election. 

C HER I DAN having very successfully adapted 

Kotzebue's play of The Stranger ^ a friend 

rebuked him for not employing his great talents 



Sheridan. 1 59 

to more legitimate purposes than that of adapt- 
ing foreign sentimentality, with its tinsel em- 
bellishments, to the English stage. 
He replied in these lines of Dr Johnson's — 

" * The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
And those who live to please must please to live.' 

Kotzebue and German sausages are the order 
of the day." 

— wvw— 

TDEING stopped one night by a footpad, who 
demanded his purse, Sheridan, offering 
no resistance, merely said, "My purse, well, 
here it is : if you can find anything in it, it is 
more than I can ; therefore, I entreat you, let 
us go halves in the finding." 

— WWv— 

A FRIEND remonstrating with Sheridan on 

the instability of his means of supporting 

his costly establishment in Orchard Street, 

he tartly replied, "My dear friend, 1/ is my 

means." 

— WVW— 

A N admirer of Sheridan's was anxious that 
he should write a tragedy, but the drama- 
tist replied that there were quite enough of 
comedies of that class, and he would not add to 
their number. 



i6o Bon-Mots. 

"DEING upon one occasion sorely pressed by 
a needy creditor, who said that he had a 
heavy payment to make to-morrow^ Sheridan 
replied to his entreaties, ' ' Well, be it to-morrow, 
it is a favourite day of mine to which I refer 
many of my obligations ; and when to-morrow 
comes, I hope we shall both be prepared to 
pass our accounts to our mutual satisfaction." 

— v\/\/Vv— 



CHERIDAN, who was no sportsman, visited 
an old sportsman in Ireland, and gave 
afterwards an amusing account of his experience. 
Tn order to avoid the imputation of being a 
downright ignoramus, he was 
under the necessity of taking a 
gun, and at the dawn of day 
setting forth in pursuit of game. 
Unwilling to expose his want of 
skill, he took an opposite course 
to that of his friend, and was 
accompanied by a gamekeeper, 
provided with a bag to receive the birds 
which might fall victims to his attacks, and 
a pair of excellent pointers. The game- 
keeper was a true Pat, and possessed all 
those arts of blarney for which his country- 
men are noted ; and thinking it imperative on 
him to be particularly attentive to his master's 
friend, he lost no opportunity of praising his 




Sheridan. i6i 

prowess. The first covey (and the birds were 
abundant) rose within a few yards of the states- 
man's nose, but the noise they made was so 
unexpected, that he waited till they were out 
of harm's way before he fired. 

Pat, who was on the look out, expressed his 
surprise, and immediately observed, *' Faith, 
sir, I see you know what a gun is: it's well 
you wasn't nearer, or them chaps would be 
sorry you ever came into the country." 

Sheridan reloaded and went on, but his 
second shot was not more successful. 

• • Oh," cried Pat, " what an escape ! I'll be 
bound you rumpled some of their feathers 1 " 

The gun was loaded again, and on went the 
orator ; but the third shot was as little effective 
as the two former. 

"Hah," exclaimed Pat, although astonished 
at so palpable a miss, •' I '11 lay a thirteen you 
don't come near us to-day again ; master was 
too near you to be pleasant" 

So he went on, shot after shot, and always 
had something to say to console poor Sheridan, 
who was not a little amused at his ingenuity. 
At last, on their return home, without a bird in 
the bag, Sheridan perceived a covey quietly 
feeding on the other side of a hedge, and un- 
willing to give them a chance of flight, he 
resolved to have a slap at them on the ground. 
He did so, but, to his mortification, they all 
flew away untouched. 



i62 Bon-MdU. 

Pat, whcse exciues were now almost ex- 
hausted, still had something to say, and be 
eidaimed joyfully, looking at Sheridan very 
Eignificantly, " By Jasus ! you made them lave 
Ihal, anyway!" and with this compliment to 
his sportsmanlike qualities, Sheridan says he 
closed his morning's amusement, laughing 
heartily at his companion, and rewarding him 
with a half-crown for his patience and en- 
couragement. 

CHERIDAN was lold by a friend that his 

enemies look pleasure in speaking ill of 

him, on account of his favouring an obnoxious 



[ which his party were about to force (hrou^ 
: House. "Well, let them." he replied; 
I is but fair that they should have some 
asure for their money." 



Sheridan. 163 

"XXTHEN Miss Farren, the original Lady 
Teazle, retired from the stage to 
become the Countess of Derby, Sheridan paid 
her a happy compliment. He approached her 
in the green room, surrounded by her friends 
and admirers, and, raising her hand with some 
emotion to his lips, breathed into her ear, — 
' ' God bless you : LxLdy Teazle is no more, and 
the ' School for Scandal ' has broke up for the 
holidays." 

r\^ the re-opening of Dnuy Lane Theatre 
after the burning, Whitbread had written 
an address, in which like the other addresses, 
there were many allusions to the Phoenix. 
Sheridan remarked upon this that Whitbread 
made more of this bird than any of them ; 
he entered into particulars, and described its 
wings, back, and tail ; in short, it was a poul- 
terer's description of a Phcenix. 

pALMER, the original Joseph Surface, whose 
real character was quite in keeping with 
the assumed one, had left Drury Lane Theatre 
and started in opposition, but soon came to 
grief, and was glad to get back. The first 
time the returned actor met Sheridan after 
his escapade, it was with the air of a Joseph 
Surface. With a white pocket-handkerchief in 



1 64 Bon-Mots. 

his hand, his eyes upturned, his hand upon his 
heart, he began, " Mr Sheridan, if you could 
but know at this moment what I feel here/" 

"Stop, Jack," broke in the manager, "you 
forget that / wrote iU" 

— v\/VW— 

TN Sheridan's Westminster election contest, 
Paull, his antagonist, who was the son 
of a tailor, envious of the brilliant uniform and 
more brilliant decorations of Sir S. Hood, 
observed with some spleen, "that if he had 
chosen he might have appeared before the 
electors with such a coat himself." 

"Yes, and you might have made it, too," 
retorted Sheridan. 

— ^/\/\/Vv>— 

A LI-UDING to the stoppage of cash pay- 
ments at the Bank, in a committee of 
which Mr Bragge was chairman, Sheridan said 
that the conduct of the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer reminded him of an old proverb. 
The report of the committee was very favour- 
able; but still the Bank must be kept under 
confinement: "Brag is a good dog," says the 
Minister, "but Holdfast is a better" : and the 
Bank must be kept under his tutelage until he 
finds it convenient to set the directors at liberty. 



"pALKTNG with a friend who had said thai 
Pin was a very extraordinary man, Sheri- 
dan answered, "He ij an extraordinary man, 
and the more we press him, the more he 



OH being asked by a young Member of 
^^ Parliament how he first succeeded in 
establishing his fame as an orator, Sheridan 
observed ; — " Why, wr, it was 
easily eHecled. After I luv 
been in St Stephen's Chapel i 
few days, 1 found thai four 
fifths of (he House were com 
posed of country squires ani 
great fools ; my first effort, 
ihererore, was by a lively 
sally, or aji ironical remark 
to mike Ihem laugh ; that 
laugh effaced the recollec- 
tion of whnt had been urged in opposilton lo 
my view of the subject from (heir stupid pates, 
and then I whipped in an argument, and had 
all the way clear before me." 

T ORD JOHN RUSSELL, in recounting 

Sheridan's joke lo Tarlelon, says, "Any 

one might think the wit poor (although t do 

not agree with them), but the joke is clear 



1 66 Bon-Mots. 

enough. ' I was on a horse, and now I 'm on 
an elephant ' {i,e, * I was high above others, 
but now I am much higher'). *You were on 
an ass, and now you're on a mule,' said 
Sheridan {i.e.j *You were stupid and now 
you're obstinate'). For quick repartee in 
conversation there are few things better." 



C OME one was complaining of an ugly house 
built by D'Arblay just near them at 
Leatherhead, when Sheridan said, '*Oh, you 
know we can easily get rid of that, we can 
pack it off out of the country under the Alien 
Act." 

— a/\/Wn«— 

TOURING the great trial of Warren Hastings, 
Sheridan was making one of his speeches, 
when, having observed Gibbon among the 
audience, he took occasion to refer to the 
"luminous author of the Decline and Fall/'* 
A friend afterwards reproached him for flat- 
tering Gibbon. 

"Why, what did I say of him?" asked 
Sheridan. 

" You called him the luminous author of the 
Decline and Fall, 

" Luminous ! oh, of course I meant volu- 
minous." 



Sheridan. 167 

>^NE of Sheridan's retorts on Pitt, "the 
^ heaven-born Minister," showed singular 
readiness of allusion and presence of mind 
when they were least to be expected. One 
night Sheridan entered the House drunk ; Pitt, 
observing his condition, proposed to postpone 
some discussion in which Sheridan was con- 
cerned, in consideration of the peculiar state of 
the honourable member. Sheridan upon this 
fired ; and the instant his self-possession 
returned, rose, and remarked that in the 
history of that House, he believed, but one 
instance of the disgraceful conduct insinuated 
by the honourable member had occurred. 
There was but one example of members having 
entered that House in a state of temporary 
disqualification for its duties, and that example, 
however discreditable to the parties, could not 
perhaps be deplored, as it had given rise to a 
pleasant epigram. The honourable member on 
the Treasiu^y Bench would correct him, if he 
misquoted the words. Two gentlemen, the one 
blind drunk, the other seeing double, staggered 
into the House, arm in arm, and thus com- 
municated their parliamentary views to each 

other — 

** I can't see the Speaker, 

Pray, Hal, do you?" 
** Not see the Speaker, Bill ! 

Why I see two." 

Henry Dundas and Pitt himself were the 
heroes of the tale. 



l68 Bon-Mots, 

r\N Lord Lauderdale telling Sberidan that 

he had beard an excellent joke which he 

would repeat, Sheridan stopped him saying, 

"Pray don't, my dear Lauderdale; in your 



TOURING Sheridan's man^ement, Thomas 

Holcrofl had produced a play which he 

offered to Covent Garden, saying, that it would 



make Drury nothing but a "Splendid rmn." 
Afterwards, when he offered a play lo Sheridan, 
Sheridan retorted, " Come, come. Holcroft, it 
would be rather too bad lo make me the 
instrument of accomplishing your own predic- 



Shieridan. 169 

CHERIDAN beirig at one time a good deal 
plagued by an old maiden relation of his 
always going out to walk with him, said one 
day that the weather was bad and raining; to 
which the old lady answered, on the contrary, it 
had cleared up. 

"Yes," said Sheridan, "it has cleared up 
enough for one, but not enough for two." 

T ORD ERSKINE declared in a large party, 
where Sheridan also was present, that "a 
wife was only a tin canister tied to one's tail," 
on which Sheridan presented Lady Erskine with 
these lines — 

^' Lord Erskine, at women presuming to rail, 
Calls a wife a ' tin canister tied to one's tail ! ' 
And the fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries 

on. 
Seems hurt at his Lordship's degrading compari»)n : 
But wherefore degrading ? Considered aright — 
A canister *s polished, and useful, and bright. 
And should dirt its original purity hide. 
That's the fault of the puppy, to whom it is tied.** 

— -vWW— 

" 'T'HE right honourable gentleman," said 
Sheridan, replying to Mr Dundas in 
the House of Commons, " is indebted to his 
memory for his jests, and to his imagination for 
his facts." 



1 70 Bon-Mots. 

TXTHEN perusing Vortigem, the forged play 
ascribed to Shakespeare, Sheridan re- 
marked, turning to Ireland the elder (father of 
the forger), "This is rather strange ; for though 
you are acquainted with my opinion of Shake- 
speare, yet be it as it may, he certainly always 
wrote /^<?/r>'. " 

'T'HE orator very happily illustrated the 
style of a bill to remedy the defects of 
bills already in being by comparing it to the 
plan of a simple, but very ingenious moral tale, 
that had often afforded him amusement in his 
early days, under the title of the 
House that Jack Built, First, 
then, comes in a bill, imposing 
a tax ; and then comes in a bill 
to amend that bill for imposing 
a tax; and then comes in a bill 
to explain the bill that amended 
the bill for imposing a tax ; next 
a bill to remedy the defects 
of a bill for explaining the bill that amended 
the bill for imposing a tax; and so on ad 
infinitum. 

T OUNGING towards Whitehall, Sheridan 
met George Rose coming out of St 
Margaret's. 




Sheridan. 171 

"Any mischief on foot, George, that you 
have been at church ? " 

" No ; I have been getting a son christened ; 
I have called him William Pitt." 

"William Pitt!" echoed Sheridan. "A 
rose by any other name would smell as sweet." 

— ^WW— 

CHERIDAN having said of one of the 
members of the Cabinet that having three 
places in a most gentlemanly administration, he 
must be three times as much a gentleman as his 
colleagues. The member referred to, then recently 
married, very gravely assured the House that 
his situation was not to be envied — that every 
morning when he got up, and every night when 
he went to rest, he had a task to perform almost 
too great for human powers. Sheridan instantly 
retorted that he himself would be very happy to 
relieve Dundas from the fatigues of the Home 
Department ! 

— ^/WW— 

pOLESDEN, Sheridan's residence, was near 
to Leatherhead, respecting which there 
had been much punning at his expense. When 
he was told of this in the country, he replied 
that on his return to town he would get out of 
their debts. 

" What will you pay them ? " asked a friend. 
Oh I I '11 give them a strapping T 



<r 



172 Bon-Mols. 

TN Ihe year iSoi Kit had resigned his post as 
Minister, and was succeeded by Addinglon ; 
nil the other Ministers retaining the positions. 
Sheridan thus humorously ridiculed the airange- 
nient : — Wh«n the ex-tninisler quitted office. 
almost all the suian/inale minialers kept tbra'r 
places. How was i( that (he whole fiunily did 
not move together? Had he only one covaed 
wagon to carry friends and goods t or hai be 




left directions behind htm that ihey may know 
where lo call i I remember a fable of AriMO- 
pbanes', which is traaslaled from Gieek inlo 
decern English. I mention this for Ihe country 
gentlemen. It is of a man that sal so long on 
a seal - about as long, perhaps, as the ex- 
minister did on Ihe Treasury Bench— that be 
grew lo iL When Hercules pulled bim off. be 
left all the utting part of the man behind. Tbe 
House can make the allusion. 



Sheridan. 173 

T^HE son of Sheridan, Tom, who was expect- 
ing to get into Parliament, said on one 
occasion to his father, " I think that many men 
who are called great patriots in the House of 
Commons are great humbugs. For my own 
part, if I get into Parliament, I will pledge 
myself to no party ; but write upon my forehead 
in legible character, * to be let.' *' 

"And under that, Tom," said his father, 
" write • unfurnished.' " 

— vv/VW— 

CHER I DAN was accosted one day by a 
gentlemanly-looking elderly man who had 
forgotten the name of the street to which he 
wished to get, when the following dialogue took 
place : — 

"Sir, I wish to go to a street the name of 
which I have forgotten. It is a very uncommon 
name — pray, sir, can you tell me of any such 
street near ? " 

" Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street? " en- 
quired Sheridan. 

" No ; it is a street with an imusual name." 

• • It can't be Charles Street ? " 

" It is not a common name," said the stranger 
a little testily, " it has the most unusual name 
for a street" 

"Surely, sir," said Sheridan, "you are not 
looking for King Street ?" 



174 Bon- Mots. 

" I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd 



name." 



"Bless me, sir," said Sheridan, as though 
struck by a happy thought, "it is not Queen 
Street, is it?" 

"Queen Street! — no, no! it is a curious 
sort of name I tell you." 

" I wish, sir, I could assist you," continued 
Sheridan; "let me think. It maybe Oxford 
Street?" 

" Sir, for heaven's sake," exclaimed the irate 
stranger, " think of what I told you, that it is a 
street with anything but a common name ; 
everybody knows Oxford Street." 

" Perhaps, sir, the street has no name after 
all," ventured Sheridan, in all seriousness, as 
though offering a likely solution. 

' ' No name, sir ! — ^Why, I tell you it has — 
confound the name 1 " 

" Really, sir," went on Sheridan, " I am very 
sorry that I am unable to assist you — but let 
me suggest Piccadilly." 

The stranger could no longer restrain his 
irritation, but bounced away, exclaiming " Oh, 
damn it, what a thick-headed fellow it is 1 ** 

Sheridan, calling to him, and bowing as he 
turned, replied, "Sir, I envy you your admir- 
able memory," and then walked on, thoroughly 
enjoying his joke. 



Sheridan. 175 

" CTEAL ! to be sure they will," said Sheri- 
dan of some plagiarists, "and, egad! 
serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen 
children — disfigure them to make them pass for 
their own," 

TOURING the Westminster election contest, 
owing to the tactics of some of Sheridan's 
supporters, one of the voters called out that he 
should withdraw his countenance from him. 

"Take it away at once — take it away at 
once ! " cried Sheridan, " it is the most villain- 
ous looking countenance I ever beheld. " 

— A/\/\/V»»— 

" TDY the silence that prevails," said Sheridan, 
on entering a room full of guests, " I 
conclude that Lauderdale has been making a 
joke." 

\\7'HEN the Duke of York was obliged to 
retreat before the French, Sheridan gave 
as a toast, "The Duke of York and his brave 
followers." 

"p ECOMMENDED to a course of sea-bath- 
ing, Sheridan objected, saying that pickles 
did not agree with him. 



176 Bon-Mots. 



CPEAKING in P^liament, Sheridan com- 
pared a tax-bill to a ship built in a dock- 
yard, which was found to be defective every 
voyage, and consequently was obliged to un- 
dergo a new repair; first it was to be caulked, 
then to be new planked, then to be new ribbed, 
then again to be covered ; then, after all these 
expensive alterations, the vessel was obliged to 
be broken up and rebuilt. 

— ^^/VW— 

TN a pantomime which Sheridan wrote for 
Drury Lane Theatre, there was a practical 
joke — where in pulling off a man's boot, the leg 
was pulled off with it, which the famous Delpini 
laid claim to as his own, and publicly complained 
of Sheridan's having stolen it from him. Sheri- 
dan said it was claimed as literary property, 
being in usum Delpini. 

CHERIDAN, the first time he met Tom after 
his marriage, was seriously angry with him, 
and told him that he had made his will and cut 
him off with a shilling. 

Tom said he was, indeed, very sorry, and 
immediately added, "You don't happen to 
have the shilling about you now, sir, do 
you?" 



Sheridan. 177 

. LONG-WINDED member of Parliament 
stopped in the midst of a tedious oration 
take a glass of water. Sheridan immediately 
rose to a point of order." Everybody 
jndered what the point of order could be. 
• • What is it ? " asked the Speaker. 
•• I think, sir," said Sheridan, " that it is out 
order for a windmill to go by water. " 

— vWW— 

\NE of school-day mois attributed to Sheri- 
dan is this : — A gentleman having a re- 
arkably long visage was one day riding by 




e school, when he heard young Sheridan say, 
That gentleman's face is longer than his life." 
;ruck by the strangeness of the remark, he 
irned his horse's head, and requested the boy's 
leaning. 

"Sir," replied he, "I meant no offence in the 
orld, but I have read in the Bible at school, 
lat a man's life is but a span, and I am sure 
■>\xrface\s double that length." 

M 



178 Bon-Mots. 

J^ORD ELLENBOROUGH (then Mr Law) 
had once to cross-examine Sheridan. He 
commenced thus; "Pray, Mr Sheridan, do 
answer my questions, without point or epigram." 
"You say true, Mr Law," retorted the wit, 
" your questions are without point or epigram." 

C AID Beau Brummel : " My brain. Sherry, is 
swimming with being up all night — ^how 
can I cure it? I am not myself this morning." 
• ' Then what are you? " asked Sheridan. ' ' But 
no matter. You have mistaken your complaint ; 
there can be no swimming in a caput mortuum.*' 

— vWW— 

"P\AVID HUME and Sheridan were crossing 
the water, when, a high gale arising, the 
philosopher seemed under great apprehension 
lest he should go to the bottom. 

" Why," said Sheridan, " that will suit your 
genius to a tittle ; for my part, I care only for 
skimming on the surface." 

— v\/\/Vv— 

"DEING told that the lost tribes of Israel had 
been found, Sheridan said he was glad 
to hear it, as he had nearly exhausted the otl^r 
ten. 



Sheridan. 1 79 

QEORGE ROSE of the Treasury was talking 
to an individual in the House of Commons. 
Sheridan was standing close to him when a 
friend came up, and asked, "What news, 
to-day?— any thing afloat? ' 

"Nothing, my dear fellow, nothing, except 
the rumour of a great defalcation in the 
Treasury — mind, sub RosaP replied Sheridan 
loud enough to have been heard all round. 

— vv/VW— 



CHERIDAN once succeeded admirably in 
entrapping a noisy member who was in 
the habit of interrupting every speaker with 
cries of ' ' Hear, hear ! " He 
took an opportunity to allude 
to a well-known political 
character of the times, whom 
he represented as a person 
who wished to play the rogue, 
but had only sense enough to 
play the fooL 

' ' Where, " exclaimed Sheri- 
dan, in continuation, and with 
great emphasis, "where shall 
we find a more foolish knave or a more knavish 
fool than this?" 

" Hear, hear 1 " was instantly bellowed from 
the accustomed bench. The wicked wit bowed, 
thanked the gentleman for his ready reply to 




i8o Bon-Mots. 

the question, and sat down amid convulsions 
of laughter from all but their unfortunate 
subject. 

— v\/\/Vv^ 

'yOM SHERIDAN once mentioned to his 
father that he thought of going down a 
coal mine. 

"Go down a coal mine!" exclaimed the 
other, astonished, " what is your reason?" 

•• Oh," said Tom, "I think it would be rather 
a nice thing to say that one had been down a 

pit. 

'•Well, but you can say so," said his father. 

A LMOST to the very last, Sheridan preserved 
his readiness of wit and pleasantry. A 
solicitor who had been much favoured in wills, 
waited on him, and after he had gone anotho: 
caller came in, to whom Sheridan said, '* My 
friends have been very kind in calling upon me 
and offering their services in their respective 
ways. Dick W., for instance, has just been 
here with his will-making face.'* 

T N consequence of a continued bout of disslpa* 

tion, Sheridan was taken ill. He sent for 

a doctor, who prescribed rigid abstinence. 



Sheridan. i8i 

Calling some time after, the medical man asked 
his patient if he was attending to his advice, 
and was answered in the affirmative. 

•• Right," said the doctor ; "'tis the only way 
to secure you length of days." 

"I do not doubt it," said Sheridan, "for 




these three last days have been the longest to 
me in my life." 

— ^A/V/W — 

"DURKE'S melodramatic flinging of the 
dagger on the floor of the House of 
Commons was a complete failure, and pro- 
duced nothing but a smothered laugh, and a 
joke from Sheridan, — "The gentleman has 
brought us the knife, but where is the 
forkr 



1 82 Bon-Mols. 

/^NE of the Scotch Members of Parliament 
asked Sheridan how he got rid of the 
Irish brogue, as he wished to avoid his own 
Scotch accent. 

"My dear fellow," said Sheridan, "don't 
attempt any such thing. The House listens to 
you now because they don't understand you; 
but if you become intelligible, they will be able 
to take your measure 1 " 

m 

COON after the Irish members were admitted 
into the House of Commons on the Union 
in 1801, one of them, in the middle of his maiden 
speech, thus addressed the chair : — " And now, 
my dear Mr Speaker." 

This excited loud laughter. As soon as it had 
somewhat subsided, Sheridan observed, "that 
the honourable member was perfectly in order ; 
for thanks to the Ministers, nowadays, every- 
thing is dear" 

A LOQUACIOUS author, after babbling 
some time about his piece to Sheridan, 
said, " Sir, I fear I have been intruding on your 
attention." 

"Not at all, I assure you," replied he ; "I 
was thinking of something else " 



Sheridan. 183 

C HERIDAN was down at Brighton one day, 
when Fox (the manager) desirous of show- 
ing him some civility, took him all over the 
theatre and exhibited its beauties. 

"There, Mr Sheridan," said Fox, who com- 
bined twenty occupations without being clever 
in any, " I built and painted all these boxes, 
and I painted all these scenes." 

"Did you?" said Sheridan, surveying them 
rapidly. " Well, I should not, I am sure, have 
known you were a Fox by your brush." 

/^LIFFORD, a lawyer who had made some 
strong comments upon his political conduct, 
was once handled by Sheridan 
with considerable irony. To 
these comments Sheridan 
replied: — "As to the lawyer 
who has honoured me with 
so much abuse, I do not know 
how to answer him, as I am 
no great proficient in the lan- 
guage or manners of St Giles's. 
But one thing I can say of 
him, and it is in his favour. I 
hardly expect you will believe 
lue, but I pledge you my 
word that once, if not twice, but most as- 
suredly once, I did meet him in the company 
of gentlemen." 




184 Bon-Mots. 

A FTER witnessing the first representation of 
a dog-piece by Reynolds, called the Cara- 
van, Sheridan suddenly entered the green- 
room, as it was imagined, to congratulate the 
author. 

' • Where is he ? where is my guardian angel ? " 
he anxiously enquired. 

•* Here I am,'" answered Reynolds. 

"Pooh!' replied Sheridan, "I don't mean 
yout I mean the dog,'* 



CHERIDAN was once asked by an acquaint- 
ance, " How is it that your name has not 
an O prefixed to it ? Your family is Irish, and 
no doubt illustrious." 

"No family,' answered Sheridan, "has a 
better right to an O than our family ; for, in 
truth, we moe everybody." 

— vv/\/Vv>— 

" "VXTHY do we honour ambition and despise 
avarice, while they are both but the 
desire of possession?" enqiured a friend of 
Sheridan. 

" Because," answered he, " the one is natural, 
the other artificial ; the one the sign of mental 
health, the other of mental decay; the one 
appetite, the other disease." 



Sheridan. 185 

"IXTHEN Sheridan was asked which performer 
he liked best in a certain piece, he replied, 
' ' The prompter ; for I saw less and heard more 
of him than anyone else." 

piTT having introduced his Sinking Fund 
into the House of Commons, Sheridan 
ridiculed it, saying that "at present 
it was clear there was no surplus; 
and the only means which suggested 
themselves to him were, a loan of a 
million for the special pur- 
pose — for the right honour- 
able gentleman might say, 
with the person in the 
comedy, "//you won't lend 
me the mon^, how can I pay you f ' " 

— ^AA/W— 

TN a large party, one evening, the conver- 
sation turned upon young men's allowances 
at college. Tom Sheridan lamented the ill- 
judging parsimony of many parents in that 
respect. 

"I am sure, Tom," said his father, "you 
need not complain ; I always allowed you eight 
hundred a year." 

"Yes, father," replied Tom, " I must confess 
you allowed it ; but then it was never paid." 




1 86 Bon-Mots. 



J^ADY CRAVEN having quarrelled with 
Sheridan, said, that she kept up her 
resentment as long as she was able, until he 
made her laugh one night in a crowd coming 
out of the Opera House. 

"We were squeezed near one another by 
chance, and he said, 'For God's sake! Lady 
Craven, don't tell anybody I am a thief; for you 
know very well, if you do, everybody will be- 
lieve it!'" 

— WVW— 

'T'HE disputatious humour of one of his friends, 
Richardson by name, was once turned to 
good account by Sheridan in a very character- 
istic manner. Having had a 
hackney coach in employ for 
about five or six hours and not 
being provided with the means 
to pay for it Sheridan happened 
to espy Richardson in the 
street, and at once proposed 
to take him in the coach part of his way. 
The offer was accepted and Sheridan lost 
no time in starting a conversation on 
which he knew that his companion was 
sure to become argumentative and animated. 
Having by well-managed contradiction brought 
him to the proper pitch of excitement, Sheridan 
affected to grow impatient and angry himself ; 
at length saying that "he could not think of 




Sheridan. 187 

staying in the same coach with a person that 
would use such language," he pulled the check- 
string and desired the coachman to let him out. 
Richardson, wholly occupied with the argument, 
and regarding the retreat of his opponent as an 
acknowledgment of defeat, still pressed his point, 
and even shouted "more last words" through 
the coach window after Sheridan, who, walking 
quietly home, left the poor disputant responsible 
for the heavy fare of the coach. 

— WVW— 

TN the debate on an India Control Bill, Sheri- 
dan said, — He remembered that the India 
Board had been compared to seven doctors and 
eight apothecaries administering to the health 
of one poor patient; but their prescriptions 
were more palatable thaft the dose now mixing 
by the learned Doctor of Control (Dundas), who, 
in the true spirit of quackery, desires his patient 
to take it, — that he has no occasion to confine 
himself at home, but may safely go about his 
business as usual. This sovereign remedy 
would, no doubt, soon be advertised under the 
popular name of ' ' Scots pills for all sorts of 
Oriental ills.'* 

— i^/V/VW— 

A NUMEROUS party was assembled at 

the mansion of a northern squire. Among 

them was Sheridan and a wealthy young heir 



Sheridan. 189 

belonging to a neighbouring county. The 
youth prided himself on the accident of his 
birth, and on his consequent acquisition of 
riches. During the early part of the day the 
stripling sneered at poverty, and spoke slight- 
ingly of authors, actors, and other classes of 
the community who afford occupation and 
amusement to thousands who would be other- 
wise devoured by ennui, or seek excitement in 
vicious pleasures. 

Sheridan was naturally displeased at the want 
of tact, taste, and feeling in the young pluto- 
crat, and quietly waited an opportunity of 
making him feel the edge of his keen rebuke. 
At dinner there were twenty guests. Sheridan 
sat on the left hand at the bottom of the table, 
the youth on the right at the top, so that they 
were at opposite angles, and the whole party 
were so placed as to hear what passed from 
either of them. 

The youth talked much of all that concerned 
him ; he gave accounts of the wonderful leaping 
of his favourite hunter ; of the distance at which 
his new double barrelled gun killed a wild 
duck ; of the extraordinary staunchness of a 
cross-bred setter ; of his dexterity in catching 
a salmon with a single hair ; of his prowess in 
I^ondon, &c. &c., to the number of eighteen 
remarkable circumstances. 

After the removal of the second course silence 
ensued. Sheridan availed himself of this 



IQO Bon-MolE. 

moment, and Ihus addressed the yonlh— -his 
voice comninnding Ihe rest to silence — "Sir, 
at the distance at which I sit from yoa, I did 
not hear with accuracy the whole of your , 
interesting anecdotes ; permit me lo a^ yon — 



whose hunter performed those extraonXncuy 
leaps?" 

The youth promptly replied, " Mine, sir." 

Sheridan continued, " But whose gun was it . 
that killed so far ? " 

Again the youth answered, "Mine, sir." 

"Whose setter was so staunch?" 

" Mine, sir." repealed the viclinL 

' ' Who caught the salmon did you say ? " 

" I did," was faintly answered. 

Kheridan was inexorable, and continued, with 
the ulmosl politeness of manner until he had 
exhausted (he whole eighteen items ; and then 



Sheridan. 191 

drily said, • ' So you were the chief actor in every 
anecdote, and the author of them all. Is it not 
rather impolitic to despise your own professions?" 
The youth left the mansion the following day 
— cured, it is to be hoped of his illiberality, his 
egotism, and his boastfulness. 

— v\/\/V\^— 

/^NE day, when quite a boy, Tom Sheridan, 
who had evidently been reading about the 
Necessarians, suddenly asked his father, " Pray, 
my good father, did you ever do anything in a 
state of perfect indifference, without a motive, 
I mean, of some kind or other?" 

Sheridan, who saw what was coming, and 
had no relish for metaphysical discussion, 
replied, "Yes, certainly." 

' ' Indeed ? " said Tom. 

"Yes, indeed." 

"What, total indifference; total, entire, 
thorough indifference ? " 

" Yes, total, entire, thorough indifference." 

"Well, now then, my dear father, tell me 
what it is that you can do with (mind) total, 
entire, thorough indifference." 

"Why I can listen to you, Tom," said 
Sheridan. 

— ^\/\/\/V^.— 

•yOM was recommended by his father to take 
a wife, when he quietly asked, "Whose 
wife, sir?"